Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Iran, N. Korea Nuclear Plans Pose New Risk
British Energy sells Bruce to Cameco consortium
Iraqi Scientists Quizzed in Private
U.N. Experts Interview Iraqi Nuclear Scientist
Iran Plans Nuclear Plant for Energy Only
North Korea Denounces U.S. Hawks
N. Korea: U.S. Is Risking Nuclear War
North Korea Begins to Reopen Plant for Processing Plutonium
IAEA Cannot Tell if N.Korea Works on Nuclear Arms
U.S. Fears N.Korea Could Get 50 Bombs a Year
Nuclear Fear as a Wedge
Powell Works Phones on N. Korea Crisis
N. Korea Warned on Arms Bid
U.S. Fears N.Korea Could Get 50 Bombs a Year
U.S. Public Is Unconvinced on Need to Wage War Against Iraq
MILITARY
Karzai risks all to confront the militia generals
Ivorian Rebels Warn France Against Offensive
US Sees Risk of Missile Attacks on Planes in Kenya
Agent Green Over the Andes
Russia says destroying chemical arms too expensive
Saddam Says Iraq Ready to Fight Holy War
Iraqis Down Reconnaissance Drone
Iraq Courts Its Kurds With an Anti-U.S. Islamic Edict
Sharon Says Iraq May Be Hiding Weapons in Syria
Hezbollah Becomes Potent Anti-U.S. Force
3 on Security Council unconvinced on attacking Iraq
Why any war with Iraq will be over in a flash
Rumsfeld says U.S. can win war in two theaters
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Lawsuit against Ashcroft, INS
Out of the Shadow of Death Row
DEA ties rise in U.S. heroin use to Colombian groups
Court Upholds Registration Plan
In U.S., Terrorism's Peril Undiminished
A Groundless Ground War Edges Nearer
ENERGY AND OTHER
Greener, 'cleaner' locomotive for U.S. railroads
Federal Judge Rules Los Angeles Violates Clean Water Laws
2 Western Cities Join Suit to Fight Global Warming
Mistletoe Attracts Wildlife - Not Just Kisses
ACTIVISTS
Ailing China Rights Advocate Is Released and Sent to U.S.
-------- NUCLEAR
Iran, N. Korea Nuclear Plans Pose New Risk
Both Achieved Progress That Went Undetected
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31490-2002Dec23?language=printer
The recent disclosures of secret nuclear facilities in Iran and North Korea -- combined with the North's threat this week to resume plutonium production -- have presented the United States with its most serious nuclear challenge since the early 1990s. The episodes have not only forced a reassessment of when the two countries could become nuclear powers but also exposed widening gaps in the international fire walls built decades ago to halt the spread of nuclear materials and technology, weapons experts say.
U.S. officials had long suspected Iran and North Korea of quietly seeking uranium-based nuclear arms. But what was most startling about the revelations of the past few weeks was how much the two countries managed to achieve before anyone noticed, the experts added.
For example, Iran's secret nuclear program was disguised for two years as a water irrigation project in the country's northern desert. Two weeks ago, satellite photos revealed construction near the town of Natanz that U.S. officials say apparently is designed not for pumping water but for enriching uranium.
North Korea agreed in a 1994 pact with the Clinton administration to stop pursuit of a plutonium bomb. But then it created a hidden uranium program and disguised it so well that intelligence officials are still not sure of its location. Accounts by defectors in a recent congressional report point to at least one underground factory in tunnels in Mount Chonma, on the Chinese border. Production of enriched uranium, which would be necessary to make a weapon, appears to be underway, according to the defectors cited by the Congressional Research Service.
The disclosures have spawned new worries that other countries will be drawn into an accelerating arms race just as the Bush administration prepares for a possible conflict with Iraq. The United States has accused Iraq of trying to develop weapons of mass destruction, which Iraq has denied. While the scope of any Iraqi nuclear program is still not known, U.S. officials acknowledge that, if it exists, it is probably far less advanced than those in Iran or North Korea.
"For everyone who hoped that nuclear weapons were somehow receding from international politics, we're now seeing them come back again, in part because of our own failed policies," said Graham Allison, director of Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. "If North Korea becomes a nuclear state, you can predict that in short order South Korea and Japan may become nuclear states also. After that you've got a devil's brew."
"Just try to imagine," Allison added, "what the Middle East will be like with another nuclear actor."
Even before the recent disclosures, many weapons experts were alarmed by nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan in May 1998. The experts have also expressed concern about recent U.S. willingness to consider new uses for nuclear bombs, such as the destruction of heavily fortified bunkers.
"The nuclear issue is back again in a way it hasn't been around since the 1950s," said Andrei Kokoshin, a Russian legislator and an adviser to former president Boris Yeltsin on military and security issues. "There is a great probability that arsenals will grow and new countries will acquire weapons. And we are simply not prepared for it."
In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy's advisers made fearful predictions of a world perpetually on the brink, as nuclear weapons and know-how spread to dozens of nations on every continent. But in the decades since, membership in the nuclear club has been restrained, thanks to a combination of international monitoring, superpower pressure and strict controls on the export of sensitive technology and material.
Today, in addition to the original five nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- only India and Pakistan have declared arsenals of nuclear weapons. Israel is widely assumed to have the bomb, and North Korea is believed to have one or two nuclear devices, according to CIA analysts. South Africa built a bomb in the 1970s but later renounced its nuclear program.
Other nations have sought nuclear weapons, including Iran, Iraq and North Korea. But the technical difficulties inherent in creating fissile material -- plutonium or enriched uranium -- combined with restrictions on nuclear-related exports, helped put the bomb out of their reach. Although clandestine development of nuclear weapons was possible, as Iraq demonstrated in the early 1990s with its crash program to build a bomb, Western intelligence agencies were proficient at spotting the distinctive nuclear reactors and large reprocessing facilities required for making plutonium-based weapons.
Strikingly, both North Korea and Iran managed to fool Western spy satellites by apparently choosing uranium as their fissile material. European technology for enriching uranium for bombs has spread globally in recent years. The technology requires less production space and thus is easier to conceal, weapons experts and intelligence officials say.
"With plutonium you have big production reactors and lots of signs and signals that give you away," said Rose Gottemoeller, formerly deputy undersecretary for defense nuclear non-proliferation in the Department of Energy and now a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It is possible to build a uranium plant without giving off any signals to the outside world."
In addition, both countries appear to be benefiting from relationships with other countries that possess nuclear know-how and are increasingly willing to share it, weapons experts said.
"The spread of enrichment technology was predicted 25 years ago, and now it seems to be happening," said Leonard S. Spector, a deputy director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "There seems to be networking among the bad guys -- the technology holders who are perceived as proliferation threats. They're not just keeping it at home, they're sharing it. We haven't seen that before."
U.S. intelligence officials believe North Korea obtained uranium-enrichment technology and equipment from Pakistan in exchange for missiles. The reclusive North Korean government, which had halted its pursuit of a plutonium bomb under the agreement with the Clinton administration, is believed to have begun secretly building a uranium enrichment plant in the late 1990s using hundreds of fast-spinning devices known as gas centrifuges. Pakistan has denied aiding North Korea's nuclear efforts.
In late September, the North Koreans acknowledged the existence of a secret uranium program after Assistant Secretary of States James A. Kelly confronted them with evidence during a meeting in Pyongyang. Tensions have risen in recent weeks, culminating in North Korea's decision to rescind its agreement not to develop plutonium bombs.
If North Korea begins full production of nuclear weapons, it could develop up to five plutonium bombs from its existing stocks of reactor fuel, and could begin production of uranium-based weapons as early as 2004, according to a recent analysis by the Washington-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.
Iran's suppliers are less well-known, although U.S. intelligence officials suspect the Tehran government received help from Russian and Ukrainian companies, and possibly from China. The evidence of Iran's program came in the form of commercial satellite photos depicting two suspicious construction projects. One of them -- the "desert eradification" project near the town of Natanz -- has all the markings of a uranium enrichment plant, including eight-foot concrete outer walls to protect the facility against an attack, said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.-chartered agency that monitors nuclear facilities in scores of nations. The Natanz site and another facility near the town of Arak were first reported by opponents of the Iranian government outside the country in August.
Albright said he believes that strengthened international inspections requested by the IAEA in the 1990s could have detected the facilities sooner, and might prevent others from being developed.
"There's nothing that Iran is doing that would not be caught under [enhanced] inspections," said Albright, whose nonprofit Institute for Science and International Security released the satellite photos.
Other weapons experts say current international controls on proliferation are inadequate to prevent the kinds of violations committed by Iran and North Korea. Not only do the rules allow cheating, but they offer few tools for dealing with problem states, said Henry D. Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. For example, it is currently difficult to prevent such nations as Iran from acquiring the capacity to develop nuclear weapons as long as they do not cross the line into production, he said.
"There is no handbook, no clear enforcement features in the treaties," Sokolski said. "Now that we have, or are about to have, violations, we have to decide what to do. And what we decide to do today will decide what, if anything, will be done with future violators -- and indeed, the fate of the treaties being violated."
-------- britain
British Energy sells Bruce to Cameco consortium
REUTERS UK:
December 24, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19201/newsDate/24-Dec-2002/story.htm
LONDON - Financially stricken nuclear firm British Energy Plc said yesterday it had agreed to sell its Canadian nuclear power operation Bruce Power to a consortium led by uranium producer Cameco Corp..
British Energy said in a statement the deal would also include its 50 percent stake in Canadian wind farm Huron Wind Ltd Partnership, and the overall sale would bring in a maximum of C$770 million (US$497 million).
The buying consortium also includes TransCanada Pipelines and BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust, among others.
-------- inspections
Iraqi Scientists Quizzed in Private
U.N. Inspectors Try to Discover Extent of Nuclear Weapons Work
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 24, 2002; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31456-2002Dec23?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 23 -- The United Nations' nuclear arms watchdog has begun conducting closed-door interviews with Iraq's atomic energy experts, marking a critical new stage in the U.N. effort to verify Baghdad's claims that it has destroyed its most lethal weapons of mass destruction, according to a spokesman for the agency.
Drawing from a list of hundreds of Iraqi officials linked to Iraq's former nuclear weapons program, officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are seeking to determine whether Baghdad secretly began rebuilding that program after U.N. inspectors left the country in December 1998 on the eve of a U.S.-British bombing campaign.
While IAEA inspectors have routinely questioned Iraqi scientists at former nuclear weapons sites since they resumed inspections last month, this is the first time that they have asserted their right to conduct face-to-face interviews with individuals without the presence of an Iraqi government minder. It sets the U.N.'s nuclear sleuths ahead of their counterparts at the U.N. Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), who have yet to conduct confidential interviews with Iraq's biological, chemical weapons and ballistic missile experts.
"We are moving from an information-gathering phase to a more probing, investigative phase," the IAEA's chief spokesman, Mark Gwozdecki, said in a telephone interview from the agency's Vienna headquarters. "We can't talk about who, how or how many," he said of the scientists being questioned.
White House and State Department officials, meanwhile, dismissed an offer by Iraq this weekend to let CIA officials visit Iraq to participate in inspections and therefore, presumably, interviews. "It's nonsense," said one U.S. official. "The focus should be on Iraq coming clean."
But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld would not rule out the possibility. "I don't know what the United States might consider doing," he said. "I suppose they invited intelligence people. And as I recall, I suppose the [intelligence] community is thinking about that at the present time."
The Bush administration has stepped up pressure on Mohammed ElBaradei, the Egyptian director general of the IAEA, and Hans Blix, the Swedish executive chairman of UNMOVIC, to speed the pace of inspections and to exercise their authority to question some Iraqi specialists outside the country, where they can speak freely without the fear of reprisals.
ElBaradei said in a recent interview that he would interview Iraqi scientists abroad if he received assurances from Washington that they could obtain political asylum or return safely to Iraq. "We are now in the process of interviewing people inside Iraq in private," ElBaradei added today in an interview with CNN. "But we are also working on the practical arrangements to take people out of Iraq."
Although Iraq's nuclear weapons program was largely destroyed by U.N. inspectors after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the CIA and Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee believe that Baghdad has resumed its efforts, engaging in an intensive covert operation since 1998 to procure uranium and components that could be used in a nuclear weapons program. They have also raised concerns that Iraq has brought its nuclear weapons team back together.
"In the absence of inspections, however, most analysts assess that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear program -- unraveling the IAEA's hard-earned accomplishments," according to a recent CIA report.
While the IAEA declined to name Iraqi specialists who have been questioned, officials said several individuals would be obvious subjects. Jaafar Dhia Jaafar, credited by U.N. specialists with heading up Iraq's covert nuclear weapons program, and Mahdi Obeidi, a uranium enrichment specialist, are central figures in Iraq's secret nuclear weapons program.
Jaafar was part of a senior Iraqi delegation that met numerous times with ElBaradei and Blix in New York and Vienna this year. Following one of those visits, Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Douri, complained that the United States approached three members of the Iraqi delegation with an offer of political asylum. The offer was rejected, he said. But it remains unclear whether Jaafar was among those who had been contacted by the United States.
Pakistan, meanwhile, denied reports that the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, offered to help Iraq build a nuclear weapon in 1990. The Associated Press and the Times of London, citing U.N. documents, reported that an unidentified middleman, claiming to represent Khan, made the offer on the eve of the Gulf War. The IAEA maintained that Iraq never accepted the offer, according to the reports.
"We find it preposterous," said Mansoor Suhail, a spokesman for the Pakistani mission to the United Nations. "No responsible Pakistani scientist would enter into a a nuclear deal with any country."
----
U.N. Experts Interview Iraqi Nuclear Scientist
December 24, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-inspectors.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.N. arms experts formally questioned a senior Iraqi nuclear scientist at a Baghdad university on Tuesday, in what they said was a resumption of a regular interview program after a four year gap.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had already said on Monday that its inspectors had talked to some Iraqi scientists and was making arrangements to take them out of Iraq if needed as part of its hunt for weapons of mass destruction.
Tuesday's interview was a formal face-to-face affair.
With no Christmas Eve respite for the more than 100 inspectors based in Baghdad, teams from the IAEA and the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commissioninspected 10 sites ranging from a veterinary college to oil facilities.
An IAEA team swooped on the Technological University, checking its laboratories and equipment tagged by previous arms inspectors.
Hiro Ueki, spokesman for the inspectors, said the team interviewed at length a scientist at the facility. He said the interview was conducted in a private office chosen at random.
``This represents resumption of a regular interview program that was interrupted in 1998,'' Ueki said in a statement.
Dr. Sabah Abdul Nour, a member of Iraq's nuclear program who was interviewed by previous inspection teams before 1998, told reporters Tuesday's interview went well.
``The discussions were very friendly and questions were mainly about what has been done or any progress which has been achieved in Iraq after 1998 till now,'' he said.
``I explained to them all I know and (that) we have in fact nothing to hide,'' Abdul Nour said.
Abdul Nour said the IAEA inspectors agreed to his request that an Iraqi monitoring official attend the interview. Ueki confirmed an Iraqi ``witness'' attended.
EXPERTS INSPECT OIL FACILITIES
A U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraqi disarmament adopted last month demands inspectors be given free access to interview scientists suspected of having participated in Baghdad's banned weapons programs.
The IAEA urged states on Tuesday to guarantee protection for Iraqi scientists and their families who are taken abroad to give information about Baghdad's alleged atomic weapons program.
U.N. weapons inspectors returned to Iraq earlier last month after a four-year hiatus to resume a hunt for weapons of mass destruction, amid threats by the United States to disarm Iraq by force if it does not obey U.N. resolutions.
Some two dozen inspectors drove to the southern port city of Basra where they inspected oil facilities in the area. It was the furthest the inspectors had gone south of Baghdad since they resumed inspections on November 27.
The inspectors were spending the night in the city before inspecting a number of sites in the south on Wednesday, Iraqi sources said.
Another IAEA team visited the Salahuddin electronics factory north of Baghdad.
A chemical weapons team visited a site 45 kmsouth of Baghdad, the Iraqi officials said.
UNMOVIC ballistics experts checked a military mechanical parts factory south of Baghdad, Iraq's only plant producing ingredients used in the production of solid propellant and three other missile sites.
Biological teams inspected a veterinary school in Abu Ghreib, 25 km west of Baghdad, and a brewery in the outskirts of the capital, they said.
-------- iran
Iran Plans Nuclear Plant for Energy Only
December 24, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-Nuclear.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Brushing aside U.S. criticism, Iranian President Mohammed Khatami pledged Tuesday to forge ahead in building Iran's nuclear power plant.
But he said Iran didn't want nuclear arms, and would prove its sincerity by sending the plant's spent fuel rods -- a potential source of fissionable material -- abroad for reprocessing.
``We have no problem with sending the nuclear waste and uranium waste to other countries,'' Khatami said on his first visit to Pakistan. ``We are not insisting on keeping them in Iran, where they could also pose an environmental problem.''
Khatami made the promise at a news conference with Pakistani Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali in Islamabad, where he urged critics to focus on Israel's reported nuclear arsenal, rather than on recently emerged nuclear powers like Pakistan.
Israel has never acknowledged to possessing nuclear weapons.
Iranian officials insist the nation's nuclear facilities are used only to generate power, even though Iran canceled a U.N. inspection of two sites in mid-December. Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, is scheduled to visit Iran in February.
The U.S. government has strongly criticized the plant at Bushehr in southern Iran, saying it could advance Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program.
On Tuesday, Khatami seemed eager to assuage Western concerns about the plant, being built with Russian help.
``We are very happy that we are going to have that nuclear power plant in Iran, and we are going to develop it for energy and peaceful purposes, I repeat, peaceful purposes,'' he said.
Both Khatami and Pakistan's newly elected prime minister head governments with powerful hardline Islamic factions. Jamali said he'd asked Khatami for help in negotiating a $3.5 billion gas pipeline deal with Pakistan's Hindu neighbor, India.
``Of course this project plays an important role for economic cooperation for Iran, Pakistan and India. It is very important to defuse tension in the whole region and increase peace and stability,'' Khatami said. ``There is no problem from our side, or the Pakistani side, and I hope that in our future talks to remove some of the concerns raised by the Indian side.''
India accuses Pakistan of backing Muslim separatists in Kashmir, an Indian province where Muslims predominate. More than 60,000 people have died in the 13-year insurgency.
Iran supports Pakistan's demand for a plebiscite to let residents of Kashmir province decide whether they should join Pakistan or India, Jamali said Tuesday. ``We agreed that the Kashmir dispute should be resolved in keeping with the wishes of the people of Kashmir.''
Khatami is the first Iranian leader to visit Pakistan since 1992.
The two nations fell out over Pakistan's support for the hardline Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan until its ouster last year in a U.S.-led war. Relations have warmed considerably since Pakistan abandoned the Taliban following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
Pakistan and Iran were expected use Khatami's visit to sign three agreements to improve bilateral trade and enhance cooperation in science and technology.
-------- korea
North Korea Denounces U.S. Hawks
Reuters
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
By Paul Eckert
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33332-2002Dec24?language=printer
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea accused hawks in the United States on Tuesday of pushing the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war and said its armed forces were up to the task of defeating any enemy.
The reclusive communist state's defense minister, speaking after Washington predicted its own armed forces could fight two wars at the same time and win, said his country had "modern offensive and defensive means capable of defeating" any enemy.
Earlier, the ruling party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, accused Washington of internationalizing the crisis and said persisting with this strategy would trigger an "uncontrollable catastrophe."
But as Pyongyang ratcheted up the rhetoric, the United States and its allies in the region urged it to abandon its nuclear brinkmanship and China, the North's main ally, called for restraint and dialogue to defuse the crisis.
South Korea, which would be in the front line of any conflict on the peninsula and favors dialogue to end the crisis, expressed frustration with its unpredictable neighbor.
"South Korea, the United States, Japan, China, Russia and the European Union are all strongly calling on North Korea to abandon the nuclear program. But the North is not listening now," outgoing South Korean President Kim Dae-jung told his cabinet.
Kim, a champion of dialogue, said the North's attitude was frustrating efforts to secure help for its shattered economy and end its international isolation.
North Korea, denounced by President Bush as part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran, set alarm bells ringing at the weekend by removing U.N. monitoring equipment at a nuclear reactor that is capable of yielding weapons-grade plutonium.
"The U.S. hawks are arrogant enough to groundlessly claim that the DPRK has pushed ahead with a 'nuclear program', bringing its hostile policy toward the DPRK to an extremely dangerous phase," its official KCNA news agency quoted Defense Minister Kim Il-chol as saying.
"The DPRK cannot remain a passive onlooker to the present serious situation where the sovereignty and right to existence of the country and nation are exposed to the worst threat owing to the U.S. hawks who are pushing the situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war," he added.
KCNA said Kim Il-chol was addressing a national meeting in the capital Pyongyang to mark the 11th anniversary of the North's leader Kim Jong-il taking command of the Korean People's army.
U.S. BACKS DIPLOMACY
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking on Monday, warned the North against taking advantage of the Iraq crisis to further its nuclear ambitions.
"We are capable of winning decisively in one (war) and swiftly defeating in the case of the other," he told a Pentagon briefing. "Let there be no doubt about it."
But Rumsfeld drew a distinction between Pyongyang and Iraq, saying years of diplomacy with Baghdad had failed.
"The situation in North Korea is a fairly recent one," he said. "The diplomacy that's under way there is in its early stages with the United States and the interested neighboring countries."
North Korea says it has a right to possess nuclear weapons if it chooses and insists that Washington sign a non-aggression pact as a basis for talks on their differences.
Washington says Pyongyang must respect its international commitments, particularly a 1994 agreement to abandon its nuclear ambitions in return for fuel oil and help with energy production.
South Korea's president-elect, Roh Moo-hyun, who won a December 19 election with a campaign criticizing Bush's tough stance on the North, met the ambassadors of China, Russia and Japan on Tuesday and spoke with Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi by telephone.
Roh's spokesman said he had asked for help dealing with the crisis and would seek meetings with the Bush administration before his inauguration in late February.
China's foreign ministry issued a statement in Beijing saying it wanted to see the Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons.
"We hope relevant sides can proceed in the overall interest of safeguarding peace and stability on the peninsula...and reach a resolution to the issue through dialogue," it said.
Washington says North Korea admitted in talks in October to maintaining a secret weapons program. U.S. intelligence experts estimate Pyongyang has already built two nuclear bombs.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. watchdog, said the North had broken U.N. seals on about 8,000 spent fuel rods in a cooling pond at Yongbyon -- a possible prelude to recovering more weapons-grade plutonium.
Pyongyang says it is reactivating the reactor to produce electricity after Washington and its allies withheld oil supplies promised under the 1994 agreement. Outside experts say the reactor has minimal power generation capacity.
----
N. Korea: U.S. Is Risking Nuclear War
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
Associated Press Writer
Dec 24, 2002
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KOREAS_NUCLEAR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
Gwozdecky says the international community must act now to persuade North Korea to stop its efforts to resume its nuclear weapons program. (Audio)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea ratcheted up its standoff with Washington on Tuesday, starting repairs at a long-frozen nuclear reactor and warning that U.S. policy is leading to an "uncontrollable catastrophe" and the "brink of nuclear war."
The communist North routinely issues fiery warnings to the United States, but the new statements were stronger than usual.
North Korean officials removed U.N. seals from more nuclear facilities and began repair work at a reactor that had been frozen since 1994, a U.N. agency said. The North Koreans will need "a month or two" to make their Soviet-designed, 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon operational, said Mark Gwozdecky, chief spokesman at the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
Alarming governments around the world, North Korea has swiftly taken steps toward a possible reactivation of nuclear facilities that experts believe were used to make one or two weapons in the 1990s.
U.S. officials said they suspected North Korea was trying to goad Washington back to the negotiating table after President Bush cut off oil shipments to the energy-starved nation.
"We will not give in to blackmail," State Department spokesman Phil Reeker said.
On Tuesday, North Korea removed U.N. seals and surveillance cameras from a fourth nuclear facility, including a reprocessing facility that produces weapons-grade plutonium.
The move disturbed U.S. officials who say North Korea has no use for plutonium other than trying to build a nuclear bomb. There are 8,000 spent fuel rods at the facility, enough to make several atomic bombs within months.
Gwozdecky said it did not appear that the North Koreans had removed any rods from the facility.
North Korea, which has accused the United States of plotting an invasion, has said it is willing to settle the nuclear issue if Washington signs a nonaggression treaty.
The North's defense minister, Kim Il Chol, said in a report on KCNA, the North Korean news agency, that "U.S. hawks" were "pushing the situation on the Korean Peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war."
In a separate report on KCNA, North Korea said Washington's hostile policy toward it would backfire and result in "an uncontrollable catastrophe." The statement was in the North's communist party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun.
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell spent a fourth day talking to North Korea's neighbors about the crisis.
Powell spoke Tuesday to Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi. Since Saturday he has also spoken with the leaders of Russia, China, South Korea, Britain and France. President Bush was monitoring developments from Camp David, where he was spending Christmas with his family, said spokesman Scott Stanzel.
The White House sought to project an air of calm as North Korea issued its strongest statement since it began to restart its nuclear facilities last weekend.
"We've made very clear we want a peaceful resolution to the situation North Korea has created by pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program, and as the president has said before, we have no intention of invading North Korea," White House spokesman Sean McCormack said.
McCormack was referring to North Korea's covert nuclear program based on uranium enrichment that is unrelated to the older, plutonium-based one. U.S. officials say North Korea acknowledged in October the existence of the second program, which violates international arms control agreements.
Britain's Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell said North Korea's moves to restart its suspended nuclear program were "very worrying."
"I think it is probably a fairly ham-fisted attempt to gain international leverage, but our best analysis at the moment is that this is not a regime that is hell-bent on confrontation," he told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.
In the past few days, North Korea has cut U.N. seals and impeded surveillance equipment at the Yongbyon reactor and its spent fuel pond, a fuel rod fabrication plant and a reprocessing facility, said IAEA director Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei.
"This rapidly deteriorating situation in the DPRK raises grave nonproliferation concerns," ElBaradei said in a statement. DPRK stands for Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The North's nuclear facilities at Yongbyon were at the center of a crisis in 1994 that some say nearly led to war. Conflict was averted when North Korea agreed to freeze the facilities in a deal with the United States.
But Pyongyang said on Dec. 12 that it planned to reactivate them to produce electricity because Washington had failed on a pledge to provide energy sources.
In neighboring South Korea, President-elect Roh Moo-hyun appealed to Russia, China and Japan for help in finding a peaceful solution to the North Korean dilemma.
Roh, who won South Korea's presidential vote last week, met ambassadors from the three regional powers Tuesday. All hoped the nuclear issue would be resolved peacefully, said Roh's spokesman, Lee Nak-hyun. Their countries have expressed support for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.
Roh takes office in February. He advocates dialogue to resolve nuclear issues with the North, while the United States has ruled out any talks before the communist state gives up its nuclear ambitions.
----
North Korea Begins to Reopen Plant for Processing Plutonium
December 24, 2002
New York Times
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/international/asia/24NUKE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - North Korea started to reopen a sealed plutonium reprocessing plant today, the most provocative and technically important step it has taken in recent days to revive a nuclear program that experts said could produce weapons within months.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said North Korean officials had disabled surveillance cameras and broken through seals barring entry to a building housing the equipment needed to turn spent fuel rods from a nearby reactor into weapons-grade material.
On Sunday, North Korean officials disabled cameras and broke seals around a pool holding 8,000 of the spent fuel rods at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, 55 miles north of Pyongyang, the capital. On Saturday, the North Koreans began dismantling monitoring equipment at the reactor itself.
"The reprocessing plant is the important one, because that's where they extract the plutonium from the spent fuel," said Mark Gwozdecky, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. "If we don't have our monitoring equipment in place, we're not in a position to assure anybody that this material is not being diverted for weapons."
The Bush administration emphasized that it would continue to deal with the issue diplomatically. But even as he endorsed diplomacy as the right course for now, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned North Korea not to assume that the United States was incapable of confronting it militarily, even as Washington prepares for possible war with Iraq.
"If they do, it would be a mistake," Mr. Rumsfeld said at a news conference.
The Korean developments also generated new bipartisan pressure from Congress for the White House to rethink its policy of not negotiating until North Korea drops its nuclear program.
North Korea disclosed in October that it had continued to pursue a nuclear program in violation of a 1994 agreement. That announcement led the United States to cut off shipments of oil to North Korea.
Since then the Pyongyang government has steadily ratcheted up the stakes in the confrontation, apparently in an effort to win economic concessions and security agreements from Washington at a time when the United States is focused on Iraq.
Faced with the new provocation today, the administration said it would stick to its demand that North Korea drop its nuclear program as a condition for negotiations.
"We think it's important to let the North Koreans know that the way to engage and integrate with the international community is to live up to treaties and agreements and obligations, not to break those agreements and then ask for more in return," a White House official said.
Asked whether the United States had set off the confrontation by labeling North Korea part of the "axis of evil," along with Iraq and Iran, thus backing Pyongyang into a corner, Mr. Rumsfeld replied that the responsibility rested with North Korea's totalitarian leadership.
"The idea that it's the rhetoric from the United States that's causing them to starve their people or to do these idiotic things," Mr. Rumsfeld said, "misses the point."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell continued the American efforts to maintain a united international front on the Korean issue.
This morning, Mr. Powell spoke with his counterparts in Russia, France and Britain to emphasize the need for "a peaceful resolution," said the State Department spokesman, Philip Reeker. Over the weekend Mr. Powell spoke with the foreign ministers of South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.
Mr. Reeker repeated the American position that there can be no negotiations while North Korea is pursuing its nuclear program. "We will not give in to blackmail," he said.
Mr. Reeker said that as far as he knew, there was no dissent among those partners from the resolve to press North Korea.
But the newly elected South Korean government, which takes office in late February, is pledged to engagement with the North, and is operating in an atmosphere of notably strong anti-American sentiment. Japanese diplomats have been privately concerned that isolating North Korea would backfire. Today Russia's deputy foreign minister, Georgi Mamedov, was quoted in a Moscow newspaper suggesting that the Bush administration was to blame.
"How should a small country feel when it is told that it is all but part of forces of evil of biblical proportions and should be fought against until total annihilation?" Mr. Mamedov asked, according to Reuters.
Mr. Reeker dismissed Mr. Mamedov's comments as "totally absurd."
Members of Congress from both parties have also started to question the administration's position on negotiations.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the departing Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview that the growing prospect of a nuclear crisis was likely to increase the pressure for international negotiations with North Korea, even if they do not directly involve the United States.
On Sunday, the incoming Republican chairman of the committee, Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, said in an interview with Fox News that the United States would "have to talk, talk continuously to South Korea, to North Korea, to Japan, be heavily engaged."
Representative Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania, said he would like to travel to North Korea to establish some communication with its government. "No dialogue is a recipe for disaster," he said. "That doesn't mean we have to appease or to cave."
Two Democrats, Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Charles E. Schumer of New York, wrote to Mr. Bush last week asking for an explanation of administration's policy. "The administration has not enunciated a clear policy goal on North Korea," Mr. Schumer said today. "They say, `Let's not talk.' But where is that leading us? You don't have to have a Ph.D. in foreign relations to understand that North Korea poses a greater danger to the United States than Iraq. But nobody quite knows what our policy is."
Although North Korea is now well down the path to completing all the steps it needs to begin processing weapons-grade plutonium at Yongbyon, officials said there was still time to avert a showdown.
Mr. Gwozdecky said the atomic energy agency's inspectors on the scene had reported that the North Koreans had not finished breaking through all the seals - a combination of electronic alarms and bolts - to get into the reprocessing plant, a job he said would probably be completed on Tuesday. He said it would be weeks or months before the plant would be operational.
Faced with a similar impasse with North Korea in 1994, the Clinton administration considered a plan to bomb Yongbyon, but instead managed to reach a negotiated settlement. But even as it has laid out a formal doctrine of pre-emption to head off threats to national security, the Bush administration has stressed that it is not contemplating military action against North Korea.
Indeed, American officials played down any sense of urgency. Responding to questions about why evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction requires the threat of immediate military action, while the certainty that North Korea is on the verge of being able to produce nuclear weapons does not, administration officials said Iraq had exhausted its chances to resolve its conflict diplomatically while North Korea had not.
"The Iraqi regime has thumbed their noses at the United Nations annually for a good period of time," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "The situation in North Korea is a fairly recent one. The diplomacy that's under way there is in its early stages for the United States and the interested neighboring countries. It seems to me to be a perfectly rational way of proceeding."
----
IAEA Cannot Tell if N.Korea Works on Nuclear Arms
Reuters
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33376-2002Dec24?language=printer
VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said on Tuesday it could not check whether North Korea was diverting resources to build atomic bombs after Pyongyang began disabling surveillance cameras.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the reclusive Stalinist state had broken the seals and disabled surveillance devices at three facilities at Yongbyon suspected of being used to make weapons-grade plutonium.
"They have already done three facilities and now they are working on the fourth," IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told Reuters.
There are four facilities at Yongbyon covered by the freeze -- a five-megawatt experimental reactor, a fuel-rod fabrication plant, a research laboratory and a power plant still under construction.
On Saturday, Pyongyang began removing the seals and disabling U.N. monitoring cameras at the five-megawatt plant after the IAEA failed to heed Pyongyang's demand early this month to take away gear so it could revive the idled reactor.
"(IAEA chief Mohamed) ElBaradei stated that unless the IAEA is able to reinstate without delay its safeguard measures at these facilities it will not be able to provide assurances that North Korea is not diverting nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices," the IAEA said.
Under a 1994 agreement with the United States, North Korea froze its nuclear programs at the Yongbyon facilities in exchange for a $5 billion package that included 500,000 metric tonnes of heavy fuel oil per year and two light-water reactors.
The light-water nuclear reactors generate less material of a type that could be used to make nuclear weapons.
----
U.S. Fears N.Korea Could Get 50 Bombs a Year
Reuters
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
By Jim Wolf
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34682-2002Dec24?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea could churn out enough plutonium to build up to 50 to 55 nuclear weapons a year if all three of its frozen nuclear reactors entered operation in coming years, a U.S. government official said on Tuesday.
The issue could be critical to world security, partly because North Korea has been developing long-range missiles possibly capable of delivering nuclear warheads.
Washington has accused Pyongyang of being the world's biggest peddler of missiles and missile production technology. North Korea on Tuesday said U.S. hard-liners were pushing the divided Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war, adding its armed forces were up to the task of defeating any enemy.
In a sign of the urgency the issue has acquired, Secretary of State Colin Powell spent a fourth straight day consulting U.S. allies, including Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, about North Korea.
"The secretary reiterated what we (have) said before -- that we are not anxious to escalate this problem but we are not going to be blackmailed," State Department spokesman Phillip Reeker said of Powell's talks with Kawaguchi. "If North Korea is looking for U.S. support, this is not the way to do it."
The reclusive communist state's defense minister, Kim Il-chol, said his country had "modern offensive and defensive means capable of defeating" any enemy. He spoke after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned Pyongyang on Monday the United States was "perfectly capable" of defeating Iraq and North Korea at the same time, should that ever be necessary.
Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea, who was elected president last Thursday on a campaign criticizing the tough U.S. stance on North Korea, met the ambassadors of China, Russia and Japan on Tuesday and spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi by telephone.
In Paris, a French Foreign Ministry spokesman, Bernard Valero, deplored North Korea's nuclear moves and urged the international community to stand firm in demanding Pyongyang respect its commitments.
WEAPONS POTENTIAL
North Korea, denounced by President Bush as part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran, triggered international fears over the weekend by removing U.N. monitoring equipment at a nuclear reactor capable of yielding weapons-grade plutonium.
Restarting the 5-megawatt plant at its Yongbyon complex, as Pyongyang has taken steps to do, would spin off about 6 kg (13 pounds) a year of weapons-grade plutonium, said the U.S. official who declined to be identified.
That would suffice for just one nuclear bomb, given the rule of thumb that it takes about 11 pounds of plutonium per weapon. Yongbyon is about 55 miles north of Pyongyang.
The output from two unfinished reactors -- a 50-megawatt unit at Yongbyon and a 200-megawatt plant at nearby Taechon -- could be added to generate as much as a combined total of 600 pounds of plutonium a year from all three plants, the official said, or enough for 50 to 55 weapons, depending on how they were configured.
"It would take several years for them to complete construction of those reactors, but if they complete the construction, that's the potential," said the official. The United States has urged Pyongyang not to restart any of its frozen nuclear facilities.
A State Department official said on Tuesday Washington had no indication Pyongyang had gone beyond dismantling the U.N. monitoring devices to actually reactivate the 5-megawatt plant or that it had moved to reprocess the spent fuel rods to recover plutonium.
Keeping North Korea from extracting bomb-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods has been a top U.S. foreign policy priority for years -- one that brought the Clinton administration to the brink of war before a landmark 1994 nonproliferation deal.
By that time, Pyongyang had probably already recovered enough plutonium to produce two nuclear weapons, the CIA has concluded.
Under the 1994 deal, North Korea agreed to freeze the 5-megawatt reactor plus the partially built 50- and 200-megawatt plants. Also frozen were the reprocessing facility and a fuel-rod fabrication plant at Yongbyon.
In exchange, Washington agreed to provide a $5 billion package to include two proliferation-resistant light-water reactors and 500,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil a year until the first light-water reactor was built. Although the light-water reactors also produce plutonium, the material is harder to extract and not as suitable for use in weapons as the materials produced at existing reactors.
REMOVING SEALS
North Korea began removing U.N. controls last weekend from the 5-megawatt plant and its associated spent fuel cooling pond, a fuel-rod fabrication plant and the reprocessing plant, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said on Tuesday.
"They have already done three facilities and now they are working on the fourth," IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told Reuters.
North Korea has maintained it has a right to possess nuclear weapons and insisted that Washington sign a nonaggression pact as a basis for talks on their differences.
Pyongyang acknowledged to U.S. officials in October it had mounted a secret program to obtain highly enriched uranium, another potential bomb-building ingredient, in violation of the 1994 agreement and other nonproliferation pacts. That prompted a U.S.-led consortium to cut off fuel oil shipments to the North, which then said it was resuming its nuclear program to generate electricity.
Having taken possession of about 8,000 spent fuel rods, Pyongyang could separate enough plutonium for about five nuclear weapons in six months to a year "or perhaps quicker" once it fired up the reprocessing plant, said David Albright, a nuclear physicist who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security.
Albright, co-editor of Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle and a member of the IAEA's Iraq monitoring team from 1992 to 1997, said the frozen reprocessing plant itself could be back in business in one to three months.
----
NEWS ANALYSIS
Nuclear Fear as a Wedge
December 24, 2002
New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/international/asia/24KORE.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 23 - North Korea's decision this weekend to remove international controls from its nuclear reactors and from a large supply of weapons-grade fuel is as much a political challenge as a military one, experts on the country's behavior say.
By taking possession of 8,000 spent fuel rods, the country could conceivably begin producing plutonium-based bombs in as little as six months, experts say. But as serious as this sounds, many analysts see another threat in the country's brash actions, and it could materialize even sooner: a weakening of the half-century-old alliance between South Korea and the United States.
A new and diplomatically inexperienced South Korean president is to take office here in February, and he seeks to pursue closer relations with his neighbor. Behind Pyongyang's latest actions, analysts detect a desire to take advantage of the new South Korean eagerness at the expense of the United States, just as America is enduring a period of intense unpopularity among South Koreans.
The North Korean ruling party's newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, alluded to this strategy in an editorial today that called for the two Koreas to work together to cut the United States out of the peninsula's diplomatic equation. "Now is the time for all Koreans to frustrate the U.S. imperialists' aggression and antireunification moves," the newspaper said.
Although no one here expects South Korea to oblige, North Korea's behavior clearly aims to deepen the cracks that have already made this country's relationship with Washington unusually fragile, and analysts who agree on little else say Pyongyang's timing could not have been more astute.
The Bush administration, which has spent two years avoiding serious diplomatic initiatives toward Pyongyang, insists there can be no dialogue with North Korea as long as it is in violation of major arms control commitments. Complicating matters yet further, Washington has been intensely focused on a possible war in Iraq, allowing North Korea to seize control of its deadly nuclear materials in the knowledge that the United States can scarcely take on two major conflicts at once.
This has been a season of huge anti-American demonstrations in South Korea, incited by the deaths in June of two schoolgirls who were accidentally crushed by an American military vehicle on patrol. The protests have revealed a deep wellspring of resentment of the large United States military presence here, and of what many South Koreans feel is their relegation to the role of barely listened-to junior partner. At the same time, feelings toward North Korea have softened, with this country's increasingly affluent and self-confident population looking more in pity than in fear at their neighbor and yearning to help North Korea rather than punish it.
Remarkably, after more than two years of high-profile efforts to engage with Pyongyang, public opinion surveys here show that South Koreans are as skeptical of their longtime ally, the United States, as they are of heavily armed North Korea.
The president-elect, Roh Moo Hyun, who emerged victorious last week in part on the strength of these sentiments, is an ardent advocate of engagement with North Korea, and has vowed to be assertive in dealing with the United States, which he has openly called heavy-handed.
Mr. Roh, who has never been abroad, has not had time to put together a national security team, and for that reason will be even more inclined to insist on extra time to develop a response to the North Korean challenge.
"I don't think the United States will make any quick judgment," said an official of the Blue House, the South Korean presidential office. "They will give a little time. Even when Bush was elected, it took one year to set up a foreign policy team. This is a very delicate period. I don't think any of the countries involved will expect any quick response."
North Korea's latest challenge is eerily similar to a nuclear crisis in 1994, when the Clinton administration drew up plans for a strike against the country's nuclear plants after Pyongyang made moves toward reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, ostensibly to make bombs.
Some voices in Washington have already begun to call for the United States to renew its threat to destroy North Korea's nuclear power center at Yongbyon.
"North Korea's purpose is to move the spent fuel rods to sites around the country where they could be weaponized in order to convince us that there can be no pre-emptive strike," said Chuck Downs, author of "Over the Line: North Korea's Negotiating Strategy."
"We have to very graphically convey to the regime that this is unacceptable," he said. "That is something that the Bush administration doesn't want to do because we are distracted with Iraq and want to pick our fights, but the North Koreans are giving us no choice."
Critics of a muscular ultimatum say that the same constraints that eventually swayed the Clinton administration against attacking North Korean sites are still in place. Seoul and more than 30,000 American troops are within easy range of North Korean artillery, military experts say. Pyongyang could rain 300,000 to 500,000 rounds on this city in the first hours of a conflict.
What is more, if Washington pushes ahead with a more confrontational approach now, it risks badly straining relations with Mr. Roh, who has insisted that South Korea be given a bigger role in shaping the alliance's North Korea diplomacy.
"That is exactly the trap that is being set by North Korea," said Scott Snyder, Korea representative for the Asia Foundation and author of "Negotiating on the Edge: North Korean Negotiating Behavior." Mr. Snyder said that without South Korean acquiescence, "military confrontation would come at the cost of our alliance, and could inflict damage to U.S. interests elsewhere in the region, as well.
"The North Koreans don't deserve this advantage, but the opportunity to divide the alliance was created by two years of drift in Korea policy, and their timing is impeccable," he said.
While some analysts have emphasized the potential military threat from North Korea's actions, others say its behavior, however alarming, is still focused on getting Washington to resume high-level discussions. The often repeated North Korean wish is for security guarantees from the United States. In exchange for them, it says, it will eliminate its weapons of mass destruction.
"These are very serious steps toward the production of more weapons-grade plutonium, but they are also very determined attempts to get us to talk," said Donald P. Gregg, a former C.I.A. Asia expert and former ambassador to South Korea. "I don't think these guys are crazy. As poker players, they have always had an ability to play a very poor hand very well, and they are showing that again."
----
Powell Works Phones on N. Korea Crisis
Dec 24,
By SCOTT LINDLAW
Associated Press Writer
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NKOREA?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell spent a fourth day talking to North Korea's neighbors about a growing nuclear crisis as Pyongyang reopened another atomic facility and warned of "an uncontrollable catastrophe" if Washington maintains a hostile policy.
Powell spoke Tuesday to Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi. Since Saturday he has also spoken with the leaders of Russia, China, South Korea, Britain and France.
The United States joined South Korea in saying North Korean technicians had removed U.N. seals and cameras from a fourth nuclear facility, a plant that makes fuel rods. The only nuclear facilities that remain untouched are two unfinished reactors.
The White House sought to project an air of calm as North Korea issued its strongest statement since it began last weekend to restart a nuclear reactor, a move U.S. officials say is a step toward building new atomic weapons.
President Bush was monitoring developments on North Korea from Camp David, where he was spending a long Christmas holiday with his family, said spokesman Scott Stanzel.
The North's defense minister, Kim Il Chol, said in a separate KCNA report that "U.S. hawks" were escalating the situation to "an extremely dangerous phase."
North Korea said Washington's hostile policy toward it would backfire and result in "an uncontrollable catastrophe." The statement by the North's communist party organ, Rodong Sinmun, was carried by the foreign news outlet Korean Central News Agency.
White House spokesman Sean McCormack had no direct comment on the new warnings from North Korea.
"We've made very clear we want a peaceful resolution to the situation North Korea has created by pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program, and as the president has said before, we have no intention of invading North Korea," he said.
International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said North Korea's recent activity at the Yongbyon facility appeared directed at provoking Washington.
"It does appear that North Korea is playing a form of brinkmanship here. I think their ultimate interest is to begin discussions with the United States because all our entreaties to them to engage with us have not been successful."
According to one defense official, there are two schools of thought on what North Korea's intentions are. Pyongyang may be trying to goad the United States back to the negotiating table and into resuming oil shipments that Bush recently halted. Or they may really intend to resume production of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.
Over the weekend, North Korea began removing the U.N. seals and surveillance cameras from three Soviet-designed nuclear facilities that could yield weapons within months.
The United States could make war against North Korea even during a conflict with Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday. But he said diplomacy, not the threat of military action, guides the Bush administration's efforts to contain Pyongyang's resurgent nuclear ambitions.
The administration demanded Monday that North Korea halt plans to restart a dormant nuclear reactor that was critical to that country's nuclear weapons program.
It pressed the communist government in Pyongyang to restore U.N. surveillance gear that it dismantled at a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and not to restart the facility.
North Korea said the reactor will be used to generate electricity, an assertion Washington rejected.
Rumsfeld said North Korea should not take the current focus on Iraq as tacit approval to go forward with its weapons programs.
"We are capable of fighting two major regional conflicts," Rumsfeld said. "We're capable of winning decisively in one and swiftly defeating in the case of the other, and let there be no doubt about it."
Rumsfeld said no military action was imminent to halt Pyongyang's nuclear efforts, and White House officials said the United States intends to pursue a diplomatic course to persuade North Korea to abandon efforts to expand its nuclear arsenal.
A senior administration official said Monday the United States does not believe the North Koreans have opened the canisters containing the fuel rods. There were conflicting reports on that question Tuesday, and the American officials could not immediately say whether North Korea was removing the rods. Monitoring was hampered by the dismantling of the monitoring equipment, one official said.
Gwozdecky said the U.N. agency does not believe North Korea has begun removing the rods, which could mark a move toward building a bomb.
North Korea said Monday the nuclear issue could be settled if Washington were to sign a nonaggression treaty.
But the United States, angry because North Korea resumed its nuclear efforts despite a 1994 agreement to abandon it, sees little reason to negotiate.
"We will not give in to blackmail," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Monday. "We're not going to bargain or offer inducements for North Korea to live up to the treaties and agreements that it has signed."
Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., a senior Armed Services Committee member, said he is seeking visas to lead a congressional delegation to the North Korean capital for talks. "When you don't have dialogue, that is when the problems develop, and that's my concern with North Korea," Weldon said.
Asked whether the U.S. military has drawn up plans to make war on North Korea, Rumsfeld said, "One of the assignments of the department is to prepare for a whole host of contingencies. We tend not to get into details as to what those contingencies might be."
----
N. Korea Warned on Arms Bid
Rumsfeld: Pyongyang Should Not Feel Emboldened by Iraq Focus
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 24, 2002; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31400-2002Dec23?language=printer
The Bush administration warned North Korea yesterday not to mistake the world's preoccupation with Iraq as an opportunity to develop a nuclear arsenal, as officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency said they had run out of ways to press North Korea to honor its commitments.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said leaders in Pyongyang should not feel emboldened by Washington's extraordinarily busy foreign policy agenda. "If they do, it would be a mistake," he told reporters. "We are perfectly capable of doing what is necessary."
Rumsfeld was responding to the North Korean government's decision to dismantle a surveillance system and threaten to restart a nuclear plant and fuel processing facility shuttered in a 1994 nuclear freeze agreement. U.S. arms control experts believe North Korea could process enough plutonium to build a half-dozen nuclear weapons within months.
North Korea's escalation of a diplomatic conflict that had been building for several months represents a serious challenge to the White House at a time when policymakers have been consumed by the confrontation with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Even as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell telephoned allies to urge continued diplomatic pressure on the Pyongyang government, U.S. officials and analysts doubted a solution would develop soon.
At the nuclear power plant in Yongbyon, where 8,000 nuclear fuel containers are stored, workers yesterday continued breaking seals and covering video cameras. The North Koreans' mood was celebratory and defiant, reported international officials. Two nuclear inspectors remain on duty, but their ability to monitor events is now severely limited by the destruction of critical elements of the surveillance system.
"Our people can't be in all places at all times, and we can't know whether they've diverted any material for nuclear weapons," said Mark Gwozdecky, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. He confirmed that the agency's board plans to meet Jan. 6, when it appears likely to refer the case to the U.N. Security Council.
U.S.-North Korean relations began to worsen in October when Pyongyang confirmed the existence of a secret nuclear weapons program uncovered by the United States. U.S. officials and allies demanded an accounting and soon halted fuel oil shipments they had begun in 1994 in return for North Korea's pledge to halt the weapons program. In response, the North Korean government announced that it would reactivate the reactor at Yongbyon to provide electricity to the fuel-strapped country.
Outside nuclear experts, however, describe the plant as a research reactor that would consume virtually all of the electricity it produced. Its principal purpose, U.S. officials contend, would be to produce the weapons-grade plutonium contained in its spent fuel.
The North Koreans have "reverted to their time-tested brinksmanship tactics," said William Drennan, a scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. "They're taking advantage of a unique moment in time where the United States is obviously distracted by global terrorism and the prospect of war on Saddam Hussein, and the South Koreans are going through a presidential transition.''
"There is a huge risk of miscalculation on both sides," Drennan said.
A senior administration official summed up U.S. policy as "being cool, calm and collected and not being overly alarmed about" the developments. The White House remains determined not to accede to what U.S. officials consider blackmail. And, the official added, "there's not much else we can do."
In the 1990s, before the two sides negotiated the nuclear freeze, President Bill Clinton strongly considered launching a preemptive strike to destroy the Yongbyon facility. That option, inherently risky, is less desirable this time because of likely resistance in South Korea and Japan, said Robert L. Gallucci, who negotiated the 1994 agreement. Nor are sanctions likely to work, he said.
That leaves either negotiations or a more passive containment policy, said Gallucci.
"The great irony is that this administration, where there has been such enthusiasm about thinking hard thoughts about preemption, may be left with the defense and deterrent posture because it has made negotiations so untenable politically and almost morally."
The bottom line of the U.S. approach since the White House concluded a policy review in June 2001 is that bad behavior will not be rewarded. In other words, North Korea would not be granted concessions or favorable attention simply for halting violations of international agreements or otherwise acting in ways perceived as aggressive.
One senior U.S. official said yesterday that the administration intends to keep playing hardball. The administration is prepared to offer talks and a broader diplomatic opening, but only after North Korea takes verifiable steps to halt its secret nuclear weapons project.
The official predicted the Pyongyang government will grow "increasingly irritated" at the U.S. refusal to negotiate, but in the end will "probably figure out some other way to talk," perhaps through a third party.
The administration should be talking to the North Koreans now, said Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said the White House is wrong not to talk with Pyongyang leaders until certain conditions are met. "We're all going to have to talk -- talk continuously to South Korea, to North Korea, to Japan, be heavily engaged," Lugar said Sunday on Fox News.
Outgoing committee chairman Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) echoed the remark: "We cannot stiff-arm everyone out there. We've got to talk. We cannot let this get out of hand." He said North Korea presents "a greater danger immediately to U.S. interests" than Hussein.
A conciliatory move by Kim may take time.
"He feels like he's got a little wiggle room because we've got our plate so full of other things. It's always better to play your brinksmanship when the person on the other side of the table is preoccupied," the official said, conceding that President Bush and his top advisers cannot give North Korea as much attention as they might otherwise.
"The demands of the war on terrorism, a potential war with Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan and how delicate that is. . . . All of that does complicate things," the official said. "The human brain can only accommodate so many crises and deal with them wisely."
----
U.S. Fears N.Korea Could Get 50 Bombs a Year
December 24, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-korea-north.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea could churn out enough plutonium to build up to 50 to 55 nuclear weapons a year if all three of its frozen nuclear reactors entered operation in coming years, a U.S. government official said on Tuesday.
The issue is critical to world security, partly because North Korea has been developing long-range missiles possibly capable of delivering nuclear warheads.
Washington accuses Pyongyang of being the world's biggest peddler of missiles and missile production technology. North Korea on Tuesday accused hawks in the United States of pushing the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war and said its armed forces were up to the task of defeating any enemy.
In a sign of the urgency the issue has taken on, Secretary of State Colin Powell spent a fourth straight day pressing Japan and other countries to boost pressure on North Korea, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said.
``The secretary reiterated what we (have) said before -- that we are not anxious to escalate this problem but we are not going to be blackmailed,'' he said. ``If North Korea is looking for U.S. support, this is not the way to do it.''
The reclusive communist state's defense minister said his country had ``modern offensive and defensive means capable of defeating'' any enemy. He spoke after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday U.S. armed forces could fight two wars at the same time and win.
South Korea, which would be in the front line of any conflict on the peninsula and favors dialogue to end the crisis, expressed frustration with its unpredictable neighbor.
``South Korea, the United States, Japan, China, Russia and the European Union are all strongly calling on North Korea to abandon the nuclear program. But the North is not listening now,'' outgoing South Korean President Kim Dae-jung told his Cabinet.
President-elect Roh Moo-hyun who was elected last Thursday on a campaign criticizing the tough U.S. stance on North Korea, met the ambassadors of China, Russia and Japan on Tuesday and spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi by telephone.
WEAPONS POTENTIAL
North Korea, denounced by President Bush as part of an ``axis of evil'' with Iraq and Iran, set alarm bells ringing over the weekend by removing U.N. monitoring equipment at a nuclear reactor capable of yielding weapons-grade plutonium.
Restarting a 5-megawatt plant at its Yongbyon complex, as Pyongyang has taken steps to do, would spin off about 6 kg (13 pounds) a year of weapons-grade plutonium, said the U.S. official who declined to be identified.
That would suffice for just one nuclear bomb, given the rule of thumb that it takes about 5 kg (11 pounds) of plutonium per weapon. Yongbyon is about 55 miles north of Pyongyang.
The output from two unfinished reactors -- a 50-megawatt unit at Yongbyon and a 200-megawatt plant at nearby Taechon -- could be added to generate as much as a combined total of 275 kg (600 pounds) of plutonium a year from all three plants, the official said, or enough for 50 to 55 weapons, depending on how they are configured.
``It would take several years for them to complete construction of those reactors, but if they complete the construction, that's the potential,'' said the official.
The United States has urged Pyongyang not to restart any of its frozen nuclear facilities. A State Department official said on Tuesday it had no indication Pyongyang had gone beyond dismantling U.N. monitoring devices to actually reactivate the 5-megawatt plant at Yongbyon.
Keeping the North from extracting bomb-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods has been a top U.S. foreign policy priority for years -- one that brought the Clinton administration to the brink of war before a landmark 1994 nonproliferation deal.enough plutonium to produce two nuclear weapons, the CIA has concluded.
Under the 1994 deal, North Korea agreed to freeze the 5-megawatt reactor plus the partially built 50- and 200-megawatt plants. Also frozen were a reprocessing facility and a fuel-rod fabrication plant at Yongbyon.
In exchange, Washington agreed to provide a $5 billion package to include two proliferation-resistant light-water reactors and 500,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil a year until the first light-water reactor was built.
REMOVING SEALS
The North began removing U.N. controls last weekend from its nuclear reactors and, perhaps most ominously, from a large supply of weapons-grade fuel at Yongbyon.
In Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, said on Tuesday North Korea was continuing to dismantle seals and disable surveillance devices meant to police its compliance with deals to curb the spread of nuclear weapons.
``They have already done three facilities and now they are working on the fourth,'' IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told Reuters.
North Korea says it has a right to possess nuclear weapons if it chooses and insists that Washington sign a nonaggression pact as a basis for talks on their differences.
Pyongyang acknowledged to U.S. officials in October it had been pressing ahead with a secret highly-enriched uranium program in violation of the 1994 agreement and other nonproliferation pacts. That prompted a U.S.-led consortium to cut off fuel oil shipments to the North, which said it was resuming its nuclear program to generate electricity.
Having taken possession of about 8,000 spent fuel rods, Pyongyong could separate enough plutonium for about five nuclear weapons in six months to a year ``or perhaps quicker'' once it fired up the reprocessing plant, said David Albright, a nuclear physicist who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security.
Albright, co-editor of Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle and a member of the IAEA's Iraq monitoring team from 1992 to 1997, said the frozen reprocessing plant itself could be back in business in one to three months.
-------- us politics
U.S. Public Is Unconvinced on Need to Wage War Against Iraq, Says Council on Foreign Relations President Les Gelb
December 24, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/international/25CFR_IRAQ.html
Council on Foreign Relations, December 2002 - Les Gelb, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, says that he is surprised by the degree of opposition in the United States to an invasion of Iraq. On a recent speaking tour, Gelb says 80 to 90 percent of audience members were against an invasion, which he says is likely by March unless Saddam Hussein is first overthrown through a coup. To get the public on its side, Gelb said it was imperative for the Bush administration to provide "a smoking gun" - conclusive evidence - that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. On other matters, Gelb, a former high State Department official in the Carter administration, says that he is skeptical that progress toward a Middle East peace can be achieved in the next year or two.
The interview with Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, took place on December 19, 2002.
Q. As the administration gears up for a probable war in Iraq, has it sold its case to the American public well enough?
A. I don't think so. I have been around the country speaking in six different cities in the last few weeks. In those meetings, I argued in favor of the administration's position. I said I thought Saddam represents a very serious national security threat that we had better deal with now rather than later. If we enter Iraq and make it a better and safer place, it will also immeasurably improve our position in the Muslim world. As I have made this case in all these different cities, I have encountered enormous opposition to my terribly persuasive arguments (laughs).
This isn't an exaggeration. Upwards of 80 to 90 percent of the audiences disagree.
Q. Why is that?
A. They disagree with the administration's policy and my own position on several grounds. First, some believe the administration simply has not made the case that Saddam is a serious threat. They want that "smoking gun" revealed. It has not been revealed.
Q. By "smoking gun," you mean pictures of nuclear facilities that make weapons, for instance?
A. Something that everyone would recognize as concrete proof that Saddam has chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. Not just allegations, but the kind of proof that most nations in the world would accept as true.
Q. The other reasons?
A. The second reason is that a lot of people worry about "the day after" - what happens after Saddam is gone. Will it set off a blood lust in Iraq? Will it set off terrorism against the United States? Are we ready to deal with it? Most people feel they have heard nothing from the administration to give them confidence that we're prepared to deal with the aftermath of war.
The third area of concern is dealing with the consequences of war here in the United States. Many of these people feel we are going to be increasingly at risk to terrorist attacks if we go after Iraq; that our cities and borders are unprepared for this, that the administration and Congress have done far too little in this last year to get us ready to deal with chemical, biological, or a dirty nuclear bomb attack.
Q. What would be your prescription to get people in a different frame of mind?
A. I think President Bush has got to produce more evidence of Iraqi cheating and Iraq's threats to the United States than he has. It is not sufficient to take the documents that the Iraqis have given us and say the Iraqis have not told us enough about the disposition of the weapons of mass destruction that we knew they had in the 1990s. And it isn't sufficient to say that the Iraqis haven't proved to us with these documents that these weapons have been destroyed. These allegations are not enough to convince a lot of these Americans who want to be convinced.
Q. And the same with foreign countries?
A. I think the task of persuasion is even more difficult abroad. We see leaders from abroad coming to the Council all the time, and they are even more skeptical about using military force against Iraq.
It's not only my own impressions from speaking around the country. I have spoken to a number of congressional staffers and told them the same story I told you. They said to me that when their bosses - the senators and congressmen - return from their districts, they tell pretty much the same story.
Q. This is bizarre. Everyone hates Saddam Hussein, but people are uncertain about trying to oust him.
A. The question is why Saddam Hussein? Not Iran? Not North Korea, which in terms of weapons of mass destruction represents more of a clear and present danger than Saddam does.
Q. Do you think there will be a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq by the spring?
A. Unless all this pressure we are putting on Saddam results in Iraqis overthrowing him in the next six to eight weeks, the chances are very, very high the U.S. will be at war with Iraq by March.
Q. On our own?
A. I don't think we will be on our own. I think in the end we will have Britain with us, Qatar, probably Kuwait, and maybe even Turkey. These are the essential countries to carry out military operations.
Q. The fact that the public may not be enthusiastic won't play a big role?
A. It won't play a big role in whether or not to go to war. It will play a big role if the war is not won quickly and decisively. A quick, decisive win will convince people that Bush made the right gamble. But if it ends up with great bloodshed in Iraq, Iraqis being killed by each other, Americans being killed by chemical and biological weapons, terrorist attacks here in the United States, Bush will have gambled and lost the presidency.
Q. Switching for a minute away from Iraq to South Korea. Do you think the election of Roh Moo Hyun causes a problem for the United States? He won on a platform of disassociating himself from the United States.
A. Roh has taken an ambiguous position. One day he seemed to say the South Koreans shouldn't follow the U.S. blindly into war against the North; the next day he said he was misunderstood. In any event, the kinds of things Roh has been saying about questioning the relationship with the United States and U.S. policies toward North Korea go way beyond the criticisms any South Korean leader has uttered in the past.
. Is the Bush administration making a mistake in not being willing to sit down at a diplomatic table with North Korea?
A. I always believe we ought to be able to sit down and talk. At the same time, I agree with President Bush that we have to be very tough with the North Koreans. They flat out violated their 1994 agreement with us about not going forward with their nuclear program, and we cannot ignore that. They have got to take us seriously. So we have to be tough with them. I would say though, be tough and talk. They are not mutually exclusive.
Q. What about the Middle East? By this time next year, it is conceivable or likely we will have any movement toward an agreement?
A. I can't imagine any serious common ground being established between the Palestinians and the Israelis in the next year or two or maybe more.
Q. Is that because of the Israeli government? Both sides?
A. I think progress was possible up until the Camp David proposals of almost two years ago, when the Israelis made enormous concessions, going way beyond anything the Palestinians would have expected, and [Palestinian leader Yasir] Arafat effectively rejected the proposals. Since then, Israelis politics have been radicalized. People we have known forever who were committed to making compromises with the Palestinians became hawks. They felt, as a result of Arafat's "no," that the issue was no longer a compromise deal of two states living side by side, a Palestinian and an Israeli one, but of survival itself.
They felt that the real Palestinian aim, revealed as a result of this "no," was the destruction of the state of Israel itself.
Q. Do you agree with that?
A. I think for a lot of Palestinians, yes, that is their real goal. And their leadership probably is inclined in that direction as well. I don't think they have really reconciled themselves to living side-by-side with the Jewish state of Israel. If they had, they had the deal in their hands, at Camp David, and a little later at Tabah [where negotiations ended in 2000].
Q. So, if you were elected the next prime minister of Israel, what should your policy be? Irreconcilable toughness? And see what happens?
A. No, the Israelis have to be tough. But they also have to show continued willingness to lay the groundwork for peace. There is no future in toughness alone. The future has got to lead back to the negotiating table and a compromise settlement. Pure toughness on Israel's part is not good for them or for the United States either. I would say that that is particularly true on the issue of the settlements. The settlements are not in the interests of Israel and not in the interests of the United States. If you ask Israeli military officers over the years, they will tell you the settlements create military vulnerabilities in almost every case, and they compel the Israeli army to protect people who are effectively unprotectable. And the whole negotiating process is made hostage to the security of the settlers. This situation really has to be reversed.
Q. What about the U.S. role in this? The Bush administration has been essentially passive. Should the U.S. thrust itself into this?
A. The U.S. shouldn't go back to where we were two years ago and try to lead and push the parties to a deal, because the parties are just not ready to make a deal. It would only end in failure and reconfirmation of everyone's worst fears. I think we should take the lead and strongly express our interest in a continuing and serious negotiating process, but to do that, we have to rebuild the political basis of support for negotiations among the Palestinians and Israelis. We have to step back from the negotiating table and concentrate on confidence-building measures. Mind you, every time I say that, almost everyone involved, Palestinians and Israelis, tell me that I don't know what I am talking about. Neither side would accept doing this, particularly the Palestinians. They say that "confidence-building" is too slow. But I don't see another choice if you want to get back to the table and serious negotiations in a year or two or more. If there is no political support, it is absolutely futile for the United States or Israel to announce new peace plans. It won't get anywhere.
Q. You're an old hand in Washington, through many bureaucratic wars. How would you describe the current state of relations between the State Department, the Pentagon, and the White House?
A. The State Department and the Pentagon are not expected to get along. They never really have, in terms of the perspectives they bring to most problems. Sometimes, it is odd, where the Pentagon people were the doves and the State Department, hawks, as was the case on Kosovo. The State Department wanted military action and the Pentagon didn't. Other times, as now, the State Department is dovish, or very careful about going to war over Iraq too quickly.
Traditionally, on most big issues, these departments have clashed. That is fine. It gives the president choices. The National Security Council staff has been critical in adjudicating the differences between the two big departments. And to some degree, the NSC staff under Condoleezza Rice still does. But there now is a fourth wheel in the picture that matters a great deal. That is Vice President Cheney and his national security staff. And they are an important factor in the shifting fortunes of policy as well.
Q. He's of course hawkish on Iraq.
A. Very much so. When people in an administration disagree with each other, it is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It makes clearer to a president what his choices are. A president should never be presented with just one choice. It is too dangerous. It is not fair. But it is up to the president in the end to reconcile these differences and keep a steady course. But if he doesn't, policy forever appears in disarray. I think policy has been in disarray for much of President Bush's tenure. But events have made him look better than the policy. He has gotten others to bend to American will because of his underlying toughness and muscularity. If others resent this bowing to power, it may cost us a great deal in the long run, but in the short run, Bush's inner core of strength has made events turn mainly in his favor.
Q. You mean 9/11 obviously made him seem focused?
A. Yes, before 9/11 they did very little about terrorism. They cut the budget to deal with terrorism. They weren't paying much attention to it. They could have been faulted greatly after 9/11, but Bush took such a clear leadership role and appeared so strong that he weathered that potential criticism. And essentially that carried him through the next six months or so. But then all these differences began to reappear in his team on how to handle terrorism and how to handle Iraq. And the appearance of disarray, and the reality of disarray, reasserted itself. And all the goodwill that had existed toward the United States after 9/11 dissipated. Remember there was a French editorial that appeared after 9/11 that said "We Are All Americans." You could almost reverse that today in terms of our isolation in the world.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Karzai risks all to confront the militia generals
UK Telegraph,
By Ahmed Rashid in Kabul
24/12/2002)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$H4DRXKJ5J4BFLQFIQMFSFFOAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2002/12/24/wafg24.xml/
A troubled year after taking office, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan insists that he is finally taking the risky but necessary steps to confront the warlords in the provinces to allow much-needed reconstruction to begin in the spring.
Hamid Karzai
Mr Karzai told The Telegraph: "The warlords know that they cannot survive without the centre [central government] and they are not strong enough to challenge the centre - there may be acts of defiance but no challenge.
"We call the shots, they [the warlords] don't call the shots but there is a huge disconnect between the central government authority and the lack of an administration - we need to fill that gap very quickly and I need good, trained people."
An assassin tried to kill Mr Karzai in Kandahar in September. Recently several Arab and Afghan al-Qa'eda suicide bombers, with explosives strapped to their waists, were arrested in Kabul.
Now heavily armed American and Afghan bodyguards, with biceps like lorry tyres, protect him round the clock. In the next few weeks he is going to need more of them, as he pushes through plans to start demobilising warlords' armies.
So far this month Mr Karzai has dismissed 29 corrupt officials in the provinces. He has also passed a decree that forces warlords to have either a political or military role in the provinces - not both - while another decree orders that disarming and demobilising the warlords' armies should be completed by June next year.
So far the results have been mixed. Some 10 officials have refused to resign. In the northern province of Kunduz Gen Mohammed Daud has already collected 6,000 weapons but in the south the powerful warlord Gen Ismail Khan has refused to disarm his troops.
Some warlords have accepted Mr Karzai's order to choose a political or military role. Others pretend not to have heard about the decree. He said: "The bottom line is that nobody has the power to reject government orders but some work according to Afghan time."
After he was elected president of the transitional government in June by the loya jirga, Mr Karzai was criticised for declining to use his newly established legitimacy to act decisively against the warlords but now he is responding to popular demand.
He said: "Politically speaking, the people are way ahead of us. People are looking at the centre to give them a change for the better, not the warlords."
Mr Karzai has also done some blunt talking to the Americans, insisting that they must distance themselves from the warlords, many of whom were supported by US forces, money and supplies during the war against the Taliban.
The key to dealing with the warlords will be in building a new army. The problem so far has been the other power centre in Kabul - the Defence Ministry - run by the Tajik faction from the Panjshir valley north of Kabul led by Gen Mohammed Fahim.
Gen Fahim has procrastinated over how to build a national army, in which America has the lead role, and over demobilising his own army, the largest in the country. Without these steps other warlords will refuse to disarm. He now insists that he is working with Mr Karzai.
Mr Karzai said that by March the rebuilding of 2,400 miles of roads will start and £200 million will be pumped into aid programmes for rural areas, which will put added pressure on the warlords.
-------- africa
Ivorian Rebels Warn France Against Offensive
Reuters;
Tuesday, December 24, 2002,
Washington Post,
World In Brief
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31754-2002Dec23?language=printer
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast -- Ivory Coast's rebel factions warned France yesterday that an attack by the former colonial ruler on rebel positions would trigger an all-out offensive.
Two days after French troops blasted three rebel pickup trucks that were attacking a town in the west, the rebel groups met in Bouake, the stronghold of the main Patriotic Movement of Ivory Coast faction, to discuss forming an alliance.
Frightened refugees fled the scene of the latest clashes, joining tens of thousands already forced from their homes by a war that has increasingly split Ivory Coast along ethnic lines since a failed coup attempt on Sept. 19.
----
US Sees Risk of Missile Attacks on Planes in Kenya
Reuters
Tuesday, December 24, 2002; 3:51 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34432-2002Dec24?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department said on Tuesday that it believed there was a risk "terrorists" might use shoulder-fired rockets to strike aircraft in Kenya, much like an unsuccessful attempt in Mombasa last month.
The State Department issued two statements advising of the possible threat in Kenya and warning U.S. citizens throughout East Africa, including Djibouti, of the general risk of attacks from unspecified "terrorists."
"The threat to aircraft by terrorists using shoulder-fired missiles continues in Kenya, to include Nairobi," the State Department said in the statements, which otherwise tracked previous warnings issued about the region in late November.
Suicide bombers killed 10 Kenyans and three Israelis in a blast at an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa on Nov. 28 moments after assailants unsuccessfully fired missiles at an Israeli airliner taking off nearby. The two events were apparently synchronized attacks on the city, a key center for Kenya's tourism industry.
As with the warnings it issued shortly after those attacks, the State Department told U.S. citizens to remain vigilant, particularly in public places like hotels and shopping malls, frequented by foreigners and it warned generally of "possible heightened risks to American citizens and interests in Kenya."
"U.S. citizens should be aware of the risk of indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets in public places, including tourist sites and other sites where Westerners are known to congregate," it said, echoing its earlier warnings.
-------- biological weapons
Agent Green Over the Andes
The Drug War According to Dr. Mengele
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
CounterPunch
December 24, 2002
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair1224.html
Hostile intentions toward the people of another country. Deployment of chemical weapons and biological agents. Pursuit of a scorched earth policy. Sound like Saddam's Iraq? Think again. This neatly capsulizes the Bush administration's ongoing depredations in Colombia, all under the shady banner of the war on drugs.
The big difference is that Saddam's hideous use of poison gas against the Kurds and, most likely, against Iran occurred more than 15 years ago. Since the Gulf War, Saddam's mad pursuits have been more on the order of chemistry experiments in bombed out basements. But the Bush administration's toxic war on Colombian peasants is happening now, day after day, in flippant violation of international law.
Indeed, as Bush offers pious homilies on Iraq's possible hoarding of so-called Weapons of Mass Destruction, his administration and its backers from both parties in congress are poised to unleash a new wave toxins in the mountains of Colombia, including a dangerous brew of biological weapons its proponents rather quaintly call mycoherbicides. Let us call it: Agent Green.
The leading germ war hawk in the congress these days is Rep. Bob Mica, a Republican from Florida. In mid-December, Mica called on his pals in the Bush administration to uncork a currently banned batch of killer fungi and begin a campaign of saturation spraying. "We have to restore our mycoherbicide," Mica fumed. "Things that have been studied for too long need to be put into action. We found that we can not only spray this stuff, but we found that we can also deactivate it for some period of time-it will do a lot of damage-it will eradicate some of these crops for a substantial period of time."
Of course, Agent Green also kills everything else it touches. There's not even a pretense to call these germ bomblets "smart fungi." This is the drug war as it might be waged by Dr. Mengele. Mica's bracing call for an unfettered germ war on Colombia should jotted down by junior legal eagles with dreams of becoming future prosecutors of war crimes.
But Mica is far from a lone crazed voice. Even the perpetually conflicted Colin Powell is on record supporting the use of biological agents as a key part of Plan Colombia. Indeed, Anne Peterson, the US ambassador to Bogota, testified recently that she believed bio-weapons had already been deployed in Colombia. Bizarrely, she later retracted this chilling observation, saying that it had been made under duress. Ms. Peterson didn't say who had applied the thumbscrews.
Then there's Rand Beers, one of the few holdovers at the State Department from Clintontime. It's easy to see why this biowar zealot appealed to the Bush crowd. Back in the late 90s, Beers was all for using germ weapons on crops in drug-producing countries. Now, as Assistant Secretary of State for narcotics, Beers trots across the globe to various international conferences where he invariably is forced to defend this toxic footnote to Plan Colombia against critics who charge that it violates, among other treaties, the Biological Weapons Convention. Beers often says that the toxic weapons are needed to fight international crime syndicates. This heady bit of sophistry is hardly an exemption from the prohibitions, which, it must be pointed out, the Bush administration doesn't believe in anyway, even though they are trigger-happy to invoke its provisions against enemy states, such as Iraq.
So, as in Macbeth, sin plucks on sin.
Agent Green is a genetically engineered pathogenic fungi, conjured up by the US Department of Agriculture's experiment station in Beltsville, Maryland. It is now being produced with US funds by Ag/Bio Company, a private lab in Bozeman, Montana and at a former Soviet bioweapons factory in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The labs are brewing up two types of killer fungi, Fusarium oxysporum (slated for use against marijuana and coca plants) and Pleospora papveracea (engineered to destroy opium poppies).
The problem is that both fungi are indiscriminate killers, posing threats to human health and to non-target species. Add to this the fact that when sprayed from airplanes and helicopters, Agent Green will be carried by winds and inevitably drift over coffee plantations, fields, farms, villages, and water supplies.
Agent Green also threatens the ecology of the Colombian rainforest, one of the most biologically diverse on the planet. These forests harbor a greater variety of species per acre than any country's. But the Colombian forests are already under frightful siege from gold mining, oil companies, logging outfits and cattle ranching. By one count, Colombia has already lost more than a third of its primary forest and continues to lose forest at a rate of 3000 square miles (or nearly 2 million acres) a year. It's possible that the Agent Green operation may saturate more than a million acres of Colombian rainforest, with potentially devastating ecological consequences for endemic wildlife and plants.
So it's likely that Amazonia could become collateral damage in the Bushites' bio-war adventurism.
This grim prospect may place the US in squarely in violation of yet another international treaty with which Bush, the former cocaine tooter, is charmingly unacquainted: the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD). ENMOD grew out of the worldwide outrage sparked by the use of Agent Orange and other environmentally malign potions plastered across Southeast Asian during the Vietnam war. Adopted by the UN in 1976 and signed by the US, ENMOD prohibits any signatory nation from using the environment as a weapon of war, which the spraying of Colombia constitutes by definition.
The US bio-bomblets can't even be made to stay in Colombia, but, like the pesticides and fumigants already dropped, will inevitably stray across the Colombian border into Ecuador and Peru. Both nations vehemently oppose the US biowar plan and charge that it violates international law. Specifically, they cite a non-proliferation section of the Biological Warfare Convention that prohibits the transfer of germ weapons and technology from one nation to another. Presumably, the Bush administration now considers Colombia a wholly owned colony, where even remote Andean valleys are in the toxic grip of the US empire.
"If Agent Green is used anywhere, it will legitimize agricultural biowarfare in other contexts," says Edward Hammond, director of The Sunshine Project, the anti-biowar group that has done excellent work in exposing the environmental consequences of toxic spraying in Colombia. "Reasoning in a similar manner as the US, others might prepare a biological attack on the US tobacco crop, which poisons millions worldwide, or those opposed to alcohol might target grapes or hops."
Eradication programs are a foolhardy way of addressing problems associated with drug consumption. It doesn't work, it oppresses the weak, and merely plays into the pockets of the drug profiteers, from the cocaine generals to the drug cartels and the banks who launder the money.
"In much of rural Colombia, there is simply no way to make a legal living," says Adam Isacson, of the Center for International Policy. "Security, roads, credit, and access to markets are all missing. The most that many rural Colombians see from their government is the occasional military patrol or spray plane. When the spray planes come, they take away farmers' illegal way of making a living, but they do not replace it with anything. That leaves the farmers with some bad choices. They can move to the cities and try to find a job, though official unemployment is already 20 percent. They can switch to legal crops on their own and risk paying more for inputs than they can get from the sale price. They can move deeper into the countryside and plant drug crops again. Or they can join the guerrillas or the paramilitaries, who will at least keep them fed."
Of course, the drug war has little do with the real motives of this ghastly program. The truth of this can be divined in the numbers. Billions in US aid and thousands of gallons of chemical pesticides have been poured on Colombia with little dent in coca production. In fact, the flow of drugs from Colombia is increasing at a rapid clip.
Back when the Clinton administration was pushing a somewhat reluctant congress to approve its multi-billion project dubbed Plan Colombia, none other than Rand Beers swore that the spray and burn tactics would "eliminate the majority of Colombia's opium poppy crop within three years." Congress bought Beers' song and dance, approving $1.3 billion dollars. (As a pre-condition for receiving the money, Congress required Colombia to begin operational testing of bioweapons. Bowing to world pressure, President Clinton waived the requirement.)
In the past five years, nearly a million acres of land in Colombia has been blitzed by pesticides and fumigants, rendered as sterile as the fields of Carthage after Scipio Africanus' last cruel visit. But over the same period production of cocaine in Colombia has more than tripled. Opium production is also soaring, increasing by more than 60 percent since 2000. Colombia now accounts for more than 30 percent of the heroin consumed in the US.
The reason for this will be obvious to anyone who has read our book Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press. War, especially covert ones, and drugs go hand in hand. Colombia is mired in a three-way civil war, with each side, guerillas, paramilitaries and the government troops, funding their operations from proceeds from the sale of drugs. The bloodier the conflict, the greater the flow of drugs.
But from the beginning Plan Colombia was only ostensibly about drugs. It was really a way to use the drug war to underwrite the Colombian military's savage war against the FARC and other rebel groups and secure US control over Colombian oil, gas and mineral reserves. The so-called eradication programs have targeted areas controlled by the FARC, rather than even larger swaths of land held by paramilitaries, serving as vicious proxy-warriors for the Colombian government.
According to Rep. Bob Barr, since the implementation of Plan Colombia at least 22 US helicopters have been shot down by Colombian rebel groups-a figure the Pentagon coyly refuses to confirm or deny. However, the State Department confirmed that last month 3 US planes were struck by groundfire on the same day.
The US presence in the war is being waged under the jurisdictional banner of the State Department, so often in the past a sign of the darker presence of the CIA and other covert warriors. In December, Colin Powell revealed his intention to up the permanent fleet of US attack helicopters in Colombia to 24. The State Department informed congress that new pilots were being trained at "a classified location" in New Mexico.
Now, it appears that the Bush administration has given Congressman Mica the greenlight to work his dark magic on the reauthorization of Plan Colombia, where he would insert language once again requiring the use of Agent Green as condition of the Colombia government getting its hands on US billions. These days they don't even go to the bother of trying to hide the strings.
There's plenty of evidence that Colombian government is now totally under the sway of Washington and will be only too happy to oblige, even if that means allowing the US to launch biological warfare attacks on its own peasants.
In a bracing irony, Colombia now presides over the UN Security Council, which is poised to clobber Iraq for hiding its history of bioweapon development. Indeed, it was the Colombian delegation that made the controversial call to hand over an early copy of Iraq's weapons declaration, which the US generously returned a week later-minus 8,000 pages.
This scandalous project drones on under the radar of the mainstream press, ever loath to tackle seriously any topic wrapped in the holy robes of the drug war. Yet, what it really adds up to is a form of environmental terrorism. The toxic wasteland and human suffering left in the wake of these operations is not accidental, not, to use the fetching term of the economists, a uncomfortable externality of an otherwise benign project. Instead, it is a calculated tactic, designed to evoke fear and terror-the carpetbombing of the drug war.
Don't say the toxic warriors in the Bush administration aren't bibliophiles. Obviously they've read Silent Spring. Only not as the stark warning Rachel Carson intended, but as a war plan which they are now bent on putting into global action.
Jeffrey St. Clair can be reached at: stclair@counterpunch.org.
-------- chemical weapons
Russia says destroying chemical arms too expensive
Tuesday December 24, 2002-- Shawwal 19, 1423 A.H.,
The News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/dec2002-daily/24-12-2002/world/w1.htm
MOSCOW: Russia hopes to receive permission from international monitors to deactivate, rather than destroy, its vast stock of chemical weapons in a bid to save money, the head of Russia's weapons agency said Monday.
"Russia believes that deactivating chemical weapons fulfills the essential obligations of the convention" that governs the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Zinovy Pak said.
Pak said that he hoped an OPCW conference set for March in The Hague "will allow us to move closer in our positions on the question of deactivation -- which would allow us to save incredible amounts of money." Russia holds the world's largest store of chemical weapons, but financial concerns have so far allowed it to eliminate just a tiny fraction of its 40,000-tonne stock.
It initially committed itself under the 1997 International Chemical Weapons Convention to eliminating its entire chemical arsenal by the start of 2007, but lack of financing prompted it to push that date back to 2012.
Since the first factory in Russia tasked with working full-time on the destruction of chemical weapons opened last week, some 2.7 tonnes of mustard gas has been destroyed, Pak said.
The Gorny factory, located in the Saratov region on the Volga river, neutralizes chemical weapons but does not entirely destroy them.
Pak said that the factory operates under heightened security for fear of being subject to a terrorist attack.
"The selection of personnel is an essential component in the fight against terrorism," Pak said, adding that "people can be bought -- that's a fact, and that's why selection must be strict". All employees undergo background and psychological tests, he said.
Workers at the factory are also better paid than those at other Russian factories, with directors getting some 30,000 rubles (1,000 dollars/euros) and disarmament workers bringing in 12,000 rubles (400 dollars/euros) a month.
Russia expects to eliminate one percent of its stock, about 400 tonnes, in the Gorny factory by April, Pak said.
'regrets' North Korea moves over nuclear lab: Russia expressed regret Monday over a decision by North Korea to start removing United Nations seals from a sensitive nuclear laboratory used for extracting weapons-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods.
Russia "regrets North Korea's unilateral action in dismantling the instruments of control" over the laboratory designed to ensure its compliance with its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
A source close to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said earlier the North Koreans had begun removing the seals at the nuclear facility at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, and could complete the operation "possibly by tomorrow."
-------- iraq
Saddam Says Iraq Ready to Fight Holy War
By NADIA ABOU EL MAGD
Associated Press Writer
Dec 24, 2002
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_WEAPONS_INSPECTORS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Saddam Hussein said Tuesday that Iraqis were ready to fight a holy war against the United States, and he accused Washington of using lies and military might in a bid to rule the world.
In a vitriolic address read to Iraqis by a television announcer, Saddam said the world was entering a new year "under unique circumstances ... which have been manufactured by the forces of evil and darkness in order to create a situation of instability, chaos and tension."
Saddam said the United States and Israel were bent on waging war against Iraq in a first step to spread their authority "across the world and control fortunes and futures" of other countries.
The Iraqi leader again rejected U.S. and British claims that his regime possesses weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam also said his regime wanted to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors conducting almost daily searches in Iraq to verify Baghdad no longer possesses chemical, biological or nuclear arms.
"We are confident that the outcome of the (U.N.) inspection operations will be a big shock to the United States and will expose all the American lies," Saddam's statement said.
An Iraqi scientist interviewed by U.N. inspectors Tuesday also said Baghdad is not hiding weapons of mass destruction, and Iraqi officials said they were willing to discuss U.N. criticisms of the nation's arms declaration.
Teams of weapons and nuclear inspectors, meanwhile, resumed inspections at numerous sites, with biological experts visiting the College of Veterinary Medicine at Baghdad University and missile teams visiting five sites in and around Baghdad connected to arms production.
The Iraqi Information Ministry said inspectors visited the Hateen Company, a complex of factories 45 miles south of Baghdad that produces artillery ammunition.
Sabah Abdel-Nour, a former member of Iraq's nuclear program who now is a professor at Baghdad's University of Technology, said his interview with U.N. inspectors was "very objective, the discussion was very friendly."
"I explained to them (the inspectors) all that I know and that we do not have anything to hide," he said. "The questions were mainly about what has been done or any progress which has been achieved in Iraq since 1998.
"They wanted to inspect whether this university has anything of their interest, they were inquiring whether there is any advanced equipment which could be used or misused."
But Abdel-Nour said he refused to be quizzed in private, preferring instead to have Iraqi officials present during the meeting.
He was not asked to leave Iraq for questioning.
"I do not have anything to say outside Iraq more of what I have said here," Abdel-Nour said.
Also, Iraq's chief representative to the U.N. mission told The Associated Press on Tuesday he saw nothing to justify the criticisms of Iraq's weapons declaration expressed last week by chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"We have nothing to add, really, of new information, because the information we gave is the real and complete information," Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin said Tuesday.
However, Baghdad was "willing to reach an understanding" with Blix and ElBaradei, Amin said.
Last week, Blix and ElBaradei said Iraq's Dec. 7 declaration largely rehashed old information, and they would be seeking more data from Iraq.
"An opportunity was missed in the declaration to give a lot of evidence," Blix said reporters after reporting to the U.N. Security Council.
The declaration, required by council Resolution 1441, was supposed to be a comprehensive account of Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, the long-range missiles to carry them and the programs to produce them.
The United States said the declaration was so inadequate it amounts to a "material breach" of the council resolution, while Britain said the declaration was a lie. The two allies have threatened to invade Iraq unless it cooperates fully with the U.N. inspection commission and eliminates its weapons of mass destruction.
Amin said his government would not threaten any Iraqi scientist accepting an invitation from the inspectors to leave the country for further interviews.
The U.N. resolution gives inspectors the right to interview scientists outside Iraq, with their families accompanying them, to reduce the chance they may be pressured by the Baghdad government.
Amin said inspectors had been interviewing Iraqi scientists for about 10 days, and his government saw no need to take them abroad.
----
Iraqis Down Reconnaissance Drone
U.S. Calls Incident Part of Baghdad's 'Campaign of Military Aggression'
By Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 24, 2002; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31399-2002Dec23?language=printer
An Air Force Predator drone was shot down over southern Iraq yesterday in the first successful Iraqi air-to-air attack since the Persian Gulf War.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the unmanned reconnaissance aircraft had been downed by "a lucky shot" from an Iraqi fighter. Defense officials said that the Kuwait-based Predator was transmitting live pictures when it was fired on, and that several rounds missed before the drone's signal stopped.
U.S. officials said they considered the downing a continuation, rather than an escalation, of exchanges of fire in the "no-fly zone" that the United States and Britain have declared off-limits to Iraqi aircraft since 1992. Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for the Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, called the downing another sign of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's "campaign of military aggression." There is a similar no-fly zone in northern Iraq.
The armed drone was flying in the vicinity of Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad. U.S. officials said it was below the 33rd parallel, which is the northern limit of the zone.
A statement from the Baghdad government said the drone had breached Iraqi airspace while on a spying mission, but it was unclear whether the statement was charging that the Predator was flying north of the no-fly limit.
An Iraqi military spokesman said the aircraft was shot down at 3:35 p.m. local time, as the result of a "delicate and planned operation" by the Iraqi air force.
The Pentagon said that Iraq has fired on U.S. and British aircraft on 32 days since Nov. 8, when the United Nations adopted a new resolution ordering Iraq to dismantle its programs for weapons of mass destruction. But those ground-launched attacks, which have gone on for years, have never hit a manned aircraft. Two Predators were downed by ground fire in the late summer of 2001, defense officials said.
Although Iraqi aircraft have approached manned U.S. patrols in the past, they have not fired on them, U.S. officials said. The officials said the Iraqis know they would be pursued and attacked.
The announcement of yesterday's shootdown came in a wide-ranging Pentagon briefing by Myers and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in which they commented on several other aspects of military policy related to Iraq.
Myers said that "we are continuing our deliberate and steady force buildup in the region." Military forces are being deployed to "complement" diplomatic efforts to disarm Iraq, he said, adding, "We want to ensure we can act quickly should it be necessary."
Officials have indicated that a wave of new troop movements is likely to be announced early next month as part of a campaign to intensify pressure on Hussein.
Rumsfeld said steps are being taken to mobilize U.S. military reserves. He said it was "a shame" that past reorganizations have left crucial tasks assigned to non-active duty units, making it difficult for large-scale operations to be mounted without such mobilizations. "We intend to see that we're no longer organized that way in the future," Rumsfeld said.
Asked whether the Iraqis are cooperating with U.N. disarmament resolutions, Rumsfeld said: "Well, they obviously aren't. And they've been making a strenuous, energetic effort to shoot down U.S. aircraft for many, many, many months now, manned and unmanned."
Even as the United States has accused Iraq of increasing attempts to attack its air patrols, U.S. aircraft have intensified what they say are responses to Iraqi aggression. Several months ago, Rumsfeld expanded a list of targets beyond those directly threatening U.S. planes to include a wide array of command-and-communications and antiaircraft facilities, in what analysts view as an effort to weaken Iraq's defenses in preparation for war.
The Pentagon has also made increasing use of the Predator drones, using armed versions to conduct surveillance over Iraq as well as to attack targets in Afghanistan and Yemen.
The no-fly zones have long been a subject of contention in the U.N. Security Council. The United States and Britain maintain they are authorized under council Resolution 688, which in 1991 ordered Baghdad to cease repression against minority groups in Iraq, and are intended to ensure that Hussein is not launching military operations in the Kurdish north or Shiite south. Last fall, Rumsfeld cited a different resolution justifying the patrols, saying they were also part of the weapons inspections regime.
Other governments, including Russia, have noted that there is no mention of no-fly zones in any U.N. resolution.
Iraq has charged that U.S. aircraft have targeted nonmilitary areas, killing scores of civilians. The United States denies this.
Last month, as attempts to shoot at the planes increased, the Bush administration said the Iraqi actions constituted a "material breach" of the U.N. resolution passed on Nov. 8.
The resolution states that once the council finds Baghdad has breached its terms, it must convene to determine consequences, including possible military action against Iraq. But no council member, including Britain, has been willing to support no-fly violations as justification for war.
----
THE KURDISH REGION
Iraq Courts Its Kurds With an Anti-U.S. Islamic Edict
December 24, 2002
New York Times
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/international/middleeast/24BAGH.html
KIRKUK, Iraq, Dec. 23 - The Iraqi government unleashed a salvo in the struggle for the hearts and minds of its Kurdish citizens today, gathering hundreds of Muslim clerics in this northern provincial capital to issue a religious fiat saying it was time to fight the Americans even as they prepare for war.
The assembly in this somewhat drab city, known more for its vast oil reserves than for any Islamic bent, was a kind of pep rally for prayer leaders, seminary students and other devotees. Each speaker brought much the same message, exhorting the Kurdish clerics to spread the word that anyone who cooperated with the Americans and their designs on Iraq would be considered an apostate.
Coming after recent reports that American intelligence officials have been recruiting for a possible invasion force in the autonomous Kurdish region, about 90 miles northeast of here, Iraq is apparently accenting the bond of religion to try to sway its often estranged Kurdish minority toward Baghdad. Organizers said that about 530 of the 600 clerics who showed up were from within the northern area, which Iraq has not controlled since the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
"The Americans have prepared everything to occupy the land of Islam, to occupy Iraq in order to loot its wealth and to license all that God has forbidden," read the fiat, or fatwa. "Fighting them has already become an obligation. We should not stand still and wait and not fight them, as we know very well what they have already done and what they are doing to Muslims in Palestine and Afghanistan and elsewhere."
From a vantage point inside Iraq, it was difficult to evaluate what impact the fatwa might have. Given that it reflects official policy, no one was likely to stand up and condemn it. Indeed, each spontaneous outburst from the floor was more volcanic than the next in denouncing the American administration and Israel.
One speaker suggested that the clerics deploy their minarets - a reference to the loudspeakers used to broadcast sermons - to "light a fire that will burn the face of the enemy."
Furthermore, although fatwas are in theory binding on all Muslims, the force of any individual edict largely boils down to the degree of esteem in which the faithful hold the scholar who issues it. Organizers from the Baghdad-based Popular Islamic Conference Organization said this one was issued by Abdel Karim al-Mudarris, a venerable Sunni cleric of Kurdish origin, said to be 110 years old, whose frail health confines him to Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.
The most noted clerics in Iraq, both Shiite and Sunni, issued similar rulings three months ago, saying it was a religious duty to fight American invaders. Apart from its target audience of Kurds, the fatwa issued today was much the same, giving anyone who opposes the presence of American troops or advisers in northern Iraq religious license to attack them.
At least one participant said he left convinced that the fatwa was just and that it would put a religious spin on any future conflict.
"This is the real thing, but it will not be applied unless they attack us," said Ali Ahmed Khuduk, a 23-year-old cleric from Sulaimaniya in the autonomous zone. "It will possibly be a religious war."
Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister, said in a speech in Baghdad today that the American military buildup was aimed at the whole Arab world. "It is a strategic buildup for a war at the level of a world war, which is at this stage targeting the entire Arab nation," he said.
Iraq for some time has been seeking to put an Islamic tint on its differences with Washington, so as to rally Muslim support to its side. Religion is a strictly state-controlled affair here, with Saddam Hussein's government denying any links to terrorist figures like Osama bin Laden, despite attempts by Washington to make the connection.
At the conference, though, clerics unleashed the kind of vitriolic oratory against the United States and its Israeli allies that has become increasingly common. "Damn the Americans and the Zionists," said Sheik Omar Hussein al-Sangawi, the head of the organization's Kirkuk office, in his sermon. "They want to destroy us, to destroy our people, with their missiles and dangerous weapons, and to impose on us their evil decisions."
The cleric said he had gone onto the Internet and discovered to his horror a speech attributed to President Bush in which he boasted of shaving the beards of the faithful in Afghanistan and tearing the burkas off the women, while introducing every manner of moral corruption. He said that the same dismal fate awaited Iraq if the clerics did not get the word out that it was time for jihad.
Speaker after speaker suggested that America sought to divide Iraq, and that it was the duty of all Iraqis - whether Kurds or Arabs - to resist. Baghdad's relations with the Kurds soured in the past two decades over various issues, especially the chemical weapons attack on the town of Halabja and what human rights and Kurdish organizations say is a campaign of resettling Kurds away from vital oil reserves. Iraq says it treats all its citizens equally.
Virtually every speaker invoked the name of Salah al-Din, or Saladin in English, the Kurdish Muslim warrior who took Jerusalem back from the Crusaders in 1187.
Abdel Latif Hayeem, who heads the organization that arranged the conference, said that while he hoped war could be avoided, he equally hoped the fatwa would persuade the Kurds to kill any American invaders - from house to house, street to street and city to city.
"The people who came here today are the real Kurdish people, not those who are signing deals with the Americans in the north," he said. "They are traitors."
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon Says Iraq May Be Hiding Weapons in Syria
Reuters
Tuesday, December 24, 2002; 4:27 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34535-2002Dec24?language=printer
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Tuesday that Israel suspected Iraq has been transferring chemical and biological weapons to Israel's arch-foe Syria to hide them from U.N. inspectors.
Sharon, in an interview with Israel's Channel Two television, said his comments were based on unconfirmed information and he gave no evidence to support the allegation against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
"What we believe, and I say that we have not yet confirmed it conclusively, is that weapons he wants to hide -- chemical and biological weapons -- have indeed been sent to Syria," Sharon said.
He said Israel was trying to verify the information.
U.N. weapons inspectors returned to Iraq last month after a four-year hiatus to resume a hunt for alleged weapons of mass destruction, amid threats by the United States to disarm Iraq by force if it does not obey U.N. resolutions.
Iraq says its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs have already been destroyed.
Sharon also told Channel Two that in the event of a war U.S. forces would operate in western Iraq and try to prevent missile or air attacks against Israel.
"The Americans definitely have a plan to begin operating, immediately at the start, in western Iraq to prevent planes from reaching Israel and to strike against missiles, if missiles are actually there," he said.
Israel has stepped up preparations for possible Iraqi missile attacks should the United States go to war against Iraq. Baghdad fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel in the 1991 Gulf War, causing one death and extensive damage in residential areas.
Israel and Syria have been in an official state of war for decades.
Syria, which took part in the 1991 Gulf War that drove Iraq from Kuwait, has since rebuilt ties with Baghdad after decades of rivalry. Nonetheless, to some surprise, Damascus cast its U.N. Security Council vote last month in favor of resolution 1441, which demands that Iraq disarm or face a possible war.
-------- mideast
Hezbollah Becomes Potent Anti-U.S. Force
December 24, 2002
New York Times
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/international/middleeast/24HEZB.html
NABATIYE, Lebanon - The Hezbollah band marched through first, its thumping tune accompanied incongruously by seven bagpipers, drawing the first cheers from thousands of drenched spectators who arrived hours early for the Jerusalem Day parade, an annual military spectacle with a virulent "I hate Israel" theme.
The public-address system then rumbled into life, drowning out the howling wind as the announcer bellowed the main slogan: "Jerusalem, Hezbollah is coming, coming!" For the next two hours, thousands of men in black fatigues with green or purple berets - the cadres of Hezbollah, whose name is Arabic for Party of God - performed a kind of jogging goose step down the main street.
"We face a plan by the United States and the Zionists to control the region, to redraw the political map of the region!" Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the party's secretary general, thundered after the marching stopped. "We should realize the extent of the dangerous and satanic goals these people have."
The reference to a possible American invasion of Iraq was clear, and the vitriol underscored the depth of Hezbollah's loathing for Israel and by extension its main backer, the United States. Its stance prompts some senior American officials to deem Hezbollah a more immediate threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Hezbollah has indeed become a potent anti-American force, but dozens of interviews here suggest that it has scant inclination to save President Hussein.
Senior American officials have singled out Hezbollah as the "A team" of terrorism, more menacing than Al Qaeda. Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has suggested that Hezbollah be dealt with before Baghdad because it is the most dangerous terrorist group on earth.
But a bitter history divides Lebanon's Shiite Muslims and the government of Iraq - Mr. Nasrallah says he himself fled Iraq one step ahead of the secret police when he was a seminary student there.
Neither Syria nor Iran, Hezbollah's two main backers, display any desire to save Mr. Hussein now. Syria voted for the tough United Nations resolution that sent weapons inspectors back to Baghdad, and Iran has been quietly cooperative in curbing Iraqi oil smuggling and helping the Iraqi opposition.
Still, Israeli military officers say it is possible that Hezbollah may use missiles and other weapons from its Syrian and Iranian sponsors to wreak havoc with any anti-Hussein coalition by trying to draw Israel into the fray.
Israel remains Hezbollah's central target. Iran and Syria helped to build Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite group, into a proxy force to fight Israel. Sheik Nasrallah is adamant that his group - which military experts say undoubtedly plays a role in providing arms and training for Palestinian militants - concentrates solely on the Arab-Israeli dispute.
"Outside this fight we have done nothing," he said in an interview. "Everybody knows where Hezbollah's arena is, where Hezbollah's battle is."
He accuses Israel of exaggerating Hezbollah's threat to lay the groundwork for hitting the organization while the world is distracted by Iraq.
Indeed, Hezbollah's incessant oratory about destroying Israel reflects more psychological warfare than the reality along Lebanon's southern border. Only periodic, carefully scripted attacks have occurred since Israel withdrew its military from southern Lebanon in May 2000 after 22 years there.
Hezbollah, whose reputation soared with the Israeli withdrawal, launches small Katyusha rockets every few months against the disputed Shabaa Farms area in what analysts call a means of maintaining its resistance credentials.
"The attacks on Shabaa have been symbolic," said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a political science professor at the Lebanese American University. "They are random, scattered and low-key."
The office where Mr. Nasrallah receives visitors is housed in a bland apartment block about eight stories high amid Beirut's ramshackle southern suburbs. Lampposts are hung with giant posters of the men who died fighting the Israeli occupation, along with the pantheon of Iranian revolutionary figures including Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Lebanon remains the only place where the Shiite Muslims of Iran succeeded in inspiring the creation of an organization in their image after their own revolution in 1979. Elsewhere their aspirations for a fundamentalist Islamic state have foundered on the general disdain of Sunni Muslims, by far the majority in world Islam, for Shiites.
Shiites have been a kind of party in opposition ever since the seventh century, when they split with the Sunnis over their demand that Muhammad's direct descendants lead the faithful. The rivalry could prove explosive in Iraq, where Shiites form a 55 percent majority of the population but have long been subjected to control by Sunnis like Mr. Hussein.
"There is a consensus among all Shiites that they would like to see a Shiite predominance in Iraq after Saddam," said Nizar Hamzeh, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut.
If Mr. Hussein's government is ousted, Iran might be expected to support the emergence of something like Hezbollah there, at least in trying to spread its political system based on a supreme religious guide.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah has two faces: public and intensely private. On one hand it maintains important public institutions - 12 members of Parliament, television and radio stations, a construction agency, agriculture outreach program, medical services and numerous charities.
But that is not all.
"At its core Hezbollah maintains a secret military security service that even its members don't know about," said Waddah Sharara, a professor of sociology at Lebanese University and a descendant of Shiite clerics from southern Lebanon.
Experts say Syria and Iran coordinate this activity, but the identity of the official liaison is unclear.
One likely candidate is Imad Mugniyeh, a man with a $25 million reward on his head from Washington. American authorities accuse him of planning most of the terror acts attributed to Hezbollah, starting with pioneering the technique of suicide bombings that killed hundreds of Americans in Beirut in 1983 and 1984.
He is believed to be responsible for the kidnapping and deaths of numerous Western hostages and is among three suspected Hezbollah members on the list of terrorists wanted for the hijacking a TWA flight in 1985 that led to the killing of a United States Navy diver, Robert Dean Stethem.
Washington has said repeatedly that he is in Lebanon, although he travels frequently. But Lebanon denies he is here, and Hezbollah professes no knowledge of the man.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah, growing richer through donations from Shiite charities worldwide and business interests like gas stations, has transformed southern Lebanon into a kind of showpiece for fighting Israel.
Beaufort Castle has commanded the stunning hills of southern Lebanon since it was built by the Crusaders in 1139.The distinctive Hezbollah flag, a fist formed from the group's name in Arabic thrusting a Kalashnikov rifle skyward, now snaps above its ramparts.
One weekend a group of middle-class Christians, Beirutis on a tour of important archaeological sites, emerged from their small bus to clamber up the battlements. The view stretches over the Israeli border to the distinctive red-roofed houses of the Israeli town of Metulla.
A portly man dressed in a Tommy Hilfiger red and white striped shirt pointed out the sites.
"To the left is Lebanon, but to the right is Azrael," he said, making a pun in Arabic by using the name for the Angel of Death. Then he pointed up to the crumbling castle walls and talked about the Israeli withdrawal: "They blew it up with explosives. That is the nature of those people; they are rats."
Another man, his admiration clear as he tilted his head backward to take in the castle walls, said: "Can you imagine? Hezbollah chased them out of here."
Huge billboards along the roads celebrate Hezbollah attacks in gruesomely vivid detail.
"Haitham's eyes are monitoring the convoy meticulously as his car is getting closer and closer," starts the description in English and Arabic of a suicide bombing. "A moment later the scene changed dramatically when Haitham stormed into the convoy - that had 30 occupation troops in it ranks - blowing up his car amid the vehicles that turned into fireballs and scattered bodies on the ground."
In recent speeches, Mr. Nasrallah has gloated that the most accomplished military minds have failed to develop a means to counter suicide attacks. "What will protect Jerusalem, its holy places, and get it and Palestine back, is the path of the Palestinian people, through martyrdom seekers who astonish the world each day and night," he said at the Jerusalem Day parade on Nov. 29.
The Hezbollah satellite station, Manar TV - manar means lighthouse in Arabic - maintains a similar drumbeat, directing its message in video clips and songs primarily at the Palestinians. In a typical clip, a boy heaves a rock at a tank, and Arabic and Hebrew words fill the screen. "Stronger than your oppression," the Arabic reads.
"My people in the West Bank: resist, resist, resist, resist," intones one song against a backdrop of old clips of Palestinian refugees and current clashes. "Hit with your dagger. Use your stone. Smash your enemy."
Hezbollah filches live film of suicide bombings from Israel television. A small team of interpreters who apparently learned Hebrew in Israeli jails translates the running commentary.
Although numbers are hard to come by, Manar is clearly gaining an audience throughout the Arab world. Walk into fundamentalist strongholds like the Medical Doctors Syndicate in Alexandria, Egypt, and the television will inevitably be tuned to Manar rather than the Qatar-based front-runner, Al Jazeera.
Manar never refers to Israel itself, always the "Zionist entity." News of an announcement from the Israeli Foreign Ministry will start, "The enemy foreign ministry announced . . ."
Hassan Fadlallah, the station's young, clean-cut news director, explained simply, "All Arab states consider Israel our enemy, so we go ahead and call it that."
This Ramadan, Manar was one of many stations in the Arab world to broadcast a nightly Egyptian series called "Knight Without a Horse," which the United States and Israel protested vigorously after the producer announced that it was based partly on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The Protocols, a late 19th-century Czarist forgery that detailed a supposed plan by Jews to control the world, has been used to persecute Jews ever since.
In the vein of what some specialists believe to be a hardening anti-Jewish mind-set in the Arab world, the news director suggested that reality seemed to exceed the book, which he said he knew only by reputation.
"The strength of the Jewish lobby and its ability to control U.S. policy," Mr. Fadlallah said. "That goes beyond what is in the book."
-------- un
3 on Security Council unconvinced on attacking Iraq
By John Daniszewski and Sebastian Rotella,
Los Angeles Times,
12/24/2002
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/358/nation/3_on_Security_Council_unconvinced_on_attacking_Iraq%2B.shtml
MOSCOW - Three key members of the UN Security Council - Russia, France, and China - say they are not yet convinced that an Iraqi declaration this month failed to fully disclose any weapons of mass destruction, an indication that the United States might face an uphill battle building the case for war against Baghdad.
The wait-and-see positions taken by the countries, all veto-holding permanent members of the Security Council, contrast sharply with President Bush's assertion last week that the 12,000-page weapons declaration from Iraq was ''a long way'' from meeting the Iraqi regime's obligations. Last Thursday, the US ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, labeled Iraq's omissions ''another material breach'' of UN resolutions, but stopped short of declaring it a trigger for war.
Britain has also been sharply critical of Iraq's performance, but has so far not declared it a breach of the resolution.
While not endorsing the Iraqi report, the three other permanent members of the council are taking a more restrained view, and accentuating Iraq's cooperative attitude toward UN weapons inspectors who have been on the ground for the past month.
Speaking at a news conference yesterday in Moscow, Foreign Minister Ivan Ivanov of Russia seemed to rule out any attack based on the Iraqi regime's behavior so far.
''Any action outside the framework of Resolution 1441 ... can do nothing but complicate the regional security situation,'' Ivanov said.
A final report of the weapons inspectors is due Jan. 27, which is emerging as the key date in deciding whether to launch a US-led military attack on the regime of Saddam Hussein in order to force Iraqi compliance.
This story ran on page A12 of the Boston Globe on 12/24/2002.
-------- us
Why any war with Iraq will be over in a flash
The power of America's technological trump cards
by Michael Evans
December 24, 2002
UK Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-523686,00.html
THE planned war against Iraq is intended to be one of the fastest operations yet conducted, possibly using secret new weapons to overcome Iraqi resistance and topple Saddam Hussein.
The creation of satellite-guided missiles has extended America's superiority over Iraq by such a large margin that the first night of air attacks could see hundreds of targets destroyed or damaged.
But America's new technological trump card is the microwave bomb, which is capable of knocking out Baghdad's electricity supplies without damaging a single building.
An early version of this concept was tested by the Americans in the 1999 air campaign over Yugoslavia when cluster bombs containing carbon fibre filaments were dropped on electricity supply lines in Belgrade and other cities, causing massive short-circuits.
If it is deployed, the latest "directed energy weapon" would involve bathing areas of Baghdad in waves of high-frequency electromagnetic pulses, crippling computers and power supplies linking the Iraqi capital to the country's air defences.
However, Rob Hewson, Editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons, said: "The Americans are being deliberately vague about these directed energy weapons.
"They have reached an advanced stage in development and have been tested. Basically, a microwave weapon would fry the electrics, but it would be indiscriminate, not just turning off electricity for Iraq's radar stations, but also affecting power to hospitals and schools.
"Will the Americans risk using such a weapon?" It will also be a laptop war. One of the key lessons learnt from Afghanistan, which will be put to good use in Iraq, was the ability of special forces, armed with backpack, satellite-connected laptops, to communicate by data-link with every type of aircraft.
The covert soldiers were able to use a marker pen on their laptop screens to pinpoint moving targets, guiding bombs to within a few feet of the enemy, if not a direct hit.
Twelve years ago, it was the F117 Stealth fighter and Tomahawk cruise missile which dominated the battlefield.
This time, if war becomes necessary, it will be the satellite-linked Joint Direct Attack Munition (Jdam), the B2 Stealth Bomber, and unmanned spy drones watching every move on the ground which will play the big roles in determining Saddam's fate.
The whole thrust of the new campaign against Saddam would be based on high-tech, high-speed, and ultra highimpact.
The Jdam is just a tail-kit attached to a "dumb" bomb, converting it into one of the smartest weapon systems around.
The kits, each costing "just" £16,500 - extraordinarily cheap in a superpower's warfighting inventory - link the 1,000lb or 2,000lb bomb to the satellite Global Positioning System (GPS) network, guaranteeing greater accuracy than ever before.
In a space shuttle mission in 2000, sponsored by the Pentagon's National Imagery and Mapping Agency, special radars collected topographic data for about 80 per cent of the globe, minutely plotting the undulations of the Earth's surface. With this information, the Jdam bomb will be capable of landing within a few yards of its target.
Another new weapon will be crucial in destroying targets on the move, such as Iraqi tanks and artillery.
The Joint Standoff Weapon (Jsow) is known as a "launch-and-leave" system, fired from an aircraft at a range of about 40 miles and at high altitude.
The missile receives in-flight target updates from a US Air Force-converted Boeing 707-300, known as an E8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint Stars) aircraft.
The Jsow is currently fitted to B2s, B52s, F16s and the carrier-based FA18s.
Four other post-1991 Gulf War weapon systems will also have a big impact on Iraq because they played a noticeably significant role in the campaign over Afghanistan. They are:
# The B2 Stealth bomber, to be based at Diego Garcia, the British-owned Indian Ocean island, and possibly at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire.
It is estimated that on the first night of air attacks on Iraq, 16 B2s, armed with Jdams, would be able to hit more than 200 targets. This would have taken several weeks in the 1991 war.
# The Predator unmanned spy drone, armed with Hellfire missiles. This system is not invulnerable, but it transformed the battlefield in Afghanistan by providing accurate information of al-Qaeda and Taleban movements there.
A Hellfire fired by a Predator using remote control killed leading al-Qaeda figures travelling in a vehicle in Yemen last month.
# Thermobaric bombs, which are fuel-rich explosives that suck air out of a confined space, creating a lethal combination of heat and pressure.
They were used for the first time in Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden's suspected cave hideouts. The special warheads were integrated into laser-guided missiles launched by F15s.
The explosives, which burn for longer than conventional explosives, would be particularly effective at incinerating chemical and biological agents.
The US Marines are getting shoulder-mounted thermobaric weapons which, if ready in time for a war with Iraq, could have devastating potential in streetfighting in Baghdad.
# The FA18E/F Super Hornet, which is about 25 per cent larger than its predecessor. It also has a greater range and more armaments. The first operational Super Hornets were put on board the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.
With such an array of firepower, the US will inevitably dwarf anything Britain will be able to contribute.
The Royal Navy has landattack Tomahawk cruise missiles, but relatively few. The RAF is also waiting for its first delivery of a new air-launched cruise missile called Storm Shadow. It's behind schedule and may not be ready in time.
However, even if production is rushed through, Mr Hewson of Jane's said that the RAF was hardly likely to fire too many of them; they each cost about £500,000.
"That's like launching a three-bedroom house in London at an Iraqi target," he said.
----
Rumsfeld says U.S. can win war in two theaters
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 24, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021224-25452610.htm
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that the United States has the military might to counter the threat of two "axis of evil" states - North Korea and Iraq - simultaneously.
His assurances that U.S. armed forces are not stretched too thin came as Pyongyang announced an aggressive move toward building nuclear weapons.
"I have no reason to believe that North Korea feels emboldened because of the world's interest in Iraq," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "If they do, it would be a mistake. We are perfectly capable of doing that which is necessary."
North Korea said yesterday that it is removing monitoring equipment set up by international inspectors to safeguard weapons-grade plutonium at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor.
The announcement sets up the possibility that, while fighting a war in Iraq this winter, the United States also might have to divert valuable military assets to thwart North Korea's nuclear ambitions. One U.S. military option, though not actively being considered, is to bomb North Korea's nuclear facilities to prevent Pyongyang from quickly assembling two to three atomic weapons.
President Bush has threatened Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein with military strikes if he does not disarm. Mr. Rumsfeld, at a Pentagon press conference yesterday where he discussed the twin problems of North Korea and Iraq, said a buildup of American forces in the Persian Gulf continues even as a second crisis is forming in North Korea.
There are about 60,000 U.S. troops near Iraq, with 50,000 more slated to be deployed in January. Mr. Rumsfeld said he is alerting Reserve units that might be called up to round out active combat forces, such as heavy Army armored divisions, in the event of war with Iraq.
Baghdad yesterday shot down an unmanned Predator spy plane over southern Iraq. An Iraqi fighter jet apparently violated an allied no-fly zone in the south to fire at the drone before retreating north.
Allied aircraft typically retaliate against Iraqi ground fire by dropping precision-guided bombs on anti-aircraft batteries and command posts.
U.S. Central Command, which runs military operations in the Persian Gulf, said the Predator went down at 7:30 a.m. EST.
"They got a lucky shot today, and they brought down the Predator," Gen. Richard B. Myers, Joint Chiefs chairman, said at the Pentagon press conference.
But Mr. Rumsfeld quickly said, "It is not a fact. We do not know for sure that it was shot down."
It was the third Predator drone shot down over southern Iraq. Iraq repeatedly has tried to knock down manned allied jets enforcing the northern and southern exclusion zones, which severely restrict the activities of Iraq's military.
North Korea has picked this time to make provocative statements about a nuclear-arms program it was supposed to freeze under a 1994 agreement with President Clinton.
Confronted with evidence to the contrary by the Bush administration, North Korea admitted during the summer that it has systematically violated the accord by acquiring bomb-making components. Mr. Bush has labeled North Korea, Iraq and Iran as an "axis of evil" that threatens world peace.
The communist regime in Pyongyang intensified its rhetoric yesterday by announcing that it was removing plutonium-monitoring equipment. Analysts say North Korea is likely to have sufficient nuclear-grade plutonium to make two or three weapons.
North Korea's official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said in an editorial that Washington could settle the issue by agreeing to a nonaggression pact. The United States rejects such a treaty with North Korea, which is one of the world's last communist police states.
South Korea, whose president-elect, Roh Moo-hyun, favors closer ties with the North, condemned Pyongyang's recent moves.
"Despite repeated warnings from our government and the international community, North Korea took further actions to unfreeze its nuclear activities, raising regional tension and amplifying international concerns over nuclear proliferation," Seoul said in a foreign ministry statement.
China, an ally of North Korea, recently broke with Pyongyang by saying the Korean Peninsula should be free of nuclear weapons.
The U.S. military's 1.4 million active-duty force is structured based on requirements in a policy statement called the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). Under the most recent QDR approved by Mr. Rumsfeld, the military is required to be able to defeat and occupy a foreign power while nearly simultaneously winning a war against a second foe.
Most analysts interpret the requirement as winning a war in the Persian Gulf against Iraq or Iran while repelling an invasion by the North into South Korea.
Mr. Rumsfeld yesterday forcefully asserted that his commanders today can carry out the QDR.
"We're capable of winning decisively in one and swiftly defeating in the case of the other," he said. "Let there be no doubt about it."
As he contemplates the timing for sending more men and women to the Gulf, Mr. Rumsfeld criticized the way the military's "total force" concept operates. To deploy heavy-combat units to war, the Pentagon must first perform the time-consuming practice of activating Reserve and National Guard units that support those divisions.
The defense secretary has ordered his staff to study whether some of those jobs cannot be permanently shifted to the active force so deployments go faster.
"You cannot do the things you normally would do with active forces - to prepare ports and prepare airfields and to train people and to begin that process of being able to respond - without activating Reserve and Guard," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "It's a shame that we're organized that way, and we intend to see that we're no longer organized that way in the future."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- courts
Lawsuit against Ashcroft, INS
By Anwar Iqbal
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
December 24, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021224-123107-1546r.htm
WASHINGTON, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- Several Muslims civil liberties groups Monday filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Immigration and Naturalization Service for what they say is the unlawful arrest of hundreds of Muslims.
The arrests were part of an INS campaign to register millions of aliens living in this country.
So far, visitors and long-time residents from mainly 20 Muslim countries have been ordered to register with the INS but the list could be further expanded.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, asserts the INS unlawfully arrested large numbers of people, Dec. 16 through Dec. 18 in Los Angeles as they came forward to voluntarily comply with new "special registration" requirements.
Four of the hundreds arrested as a result of the new INS policy are co-plaintiffs, along with two others who are afraid to register due to the illegal arrests.
The lawsuit takes issue with four aspects of the recent arrests and seeks an immediate injunction to avoid similar detentions during upcoming registrations.
Citizens and nationals of 13 countries including Afghanistan, Algeria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen are required to register by Jan. 10 while those of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are to register by Feb. 21.
The lawsuit -- filed by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Alliance of Iranian Americans, Council on American Islamic-Relations, and the National Council of Pakistani Americans -- states the arrests were illegal because the government did not obtain the necessary arrest warrants.
It says it is unlawful and unjust to arrest and deport people who are eligible to apply to legalize their status based on family relationships or their employment.
Some detainees with avenues available to legalize their status are being detained without bail or bail hearings, the plaintiffs argue.
They say the fear of mass arrests created by these detentions will obviously inhibit compliance by people facing similar registration deadlines in the near future.
The Muslim advocacy groups are seeking:
1. An injunction ordering the government not to arrest any additional persons in the "special registration" process without appropriate arrest warrants as required by existing federal laws;
2. An injunction preventing the deportation of detainees who have avenues available to legalize their status; and
3. An injunction requiring that the INS not hold detainees without bond or bond hearings if the detainees have a mechanism to legalize their status.
Although the special registration policy has been presented as a national security measure designed to counter potential terrorist threats, the INS has been using the registration process to not only enforce immigration law but to arrest and deport people who have complied with the law at every stage and are on the road to becoming permanent residents, the plaintiffs say.
The effort to deport law-abiding people who could just as easily be allowed to continue the immigration process seriously undermines prospects for future compliance and constitutes an absurd waste of resources, they argue.
The mass arrests, they say, have further eroded confidence in the fairness of the INS and immigration system among Arab and Muslim communities.
Dec. 16 was the first in a series of deadlines for special registration, which are set to culminate in 2004 with the registration of all foreign nationals in the United States.
The mass arrests which took place in Los Angeles last week, and the lawsuit filed Monday, have profound significance for the future of the registration process in many immigrant communities, and immigrants' rights in general, the plaintiffs said.
The lead attorneys in the case are Peter A. Schey and Carlos R. Holguin of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. Other co-counsel include several attorneys in the ADC Legal Department, Babak Sotoodeh of AIA, Khurrum Wahid of CAIR, Joannie Chang of the Asian Law Caucus, and several California law firms.
-------- death penalty
Out of the Shadow of Death Row
The Real-Life Stories of 'The Exonerated'
By Jane Horwitz
Washington Post
Tuesday, December 24, 2002; Page C05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31791-2002Dec23?language=printer
"When we first got the idea, we thought maybe we'll do this for some of our friends in a little 99-seat theater," Jessica Blank said of "The Exonerated," the off-Broadway play she created with husband Erik Jensen. "It turned into something way beyond anything we could have imagined."
A nonfiction story about six people on death row whose convictions were reversed, "The Exonerated" will be at the Warner Theatre Jan. 14-19. The touring company is headlined by Brian Dennehy, Mia Farrow and Chad Lowe and is directed by Bob Balaban. It opened off-Broadway in October and continues there, with such visiting stars as Richard Dreyfuss (who's signing on as a producer), Jeff Goldblum, Aidan Quinn, Gabriel Byrne, Lynn Redgrave, Marlo Thomas, Christine Lahti, Mary Steenburgen and Peter Boyle. A Los Angeles production last spring featured Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon at Robbins's theater, the Actors' Gang.
"We've just had great success getting famous people to come support us," said director Balaban, speaking (as was Blank) from New York. "The message being not that we are necessarily anti-death penalty but we are anti-killing innocent people.
"I can't tell you you'll go out humming the tune, but I can tell you that . . . you're moved, you're excited, you're stimulated," noted Balaban, who recently produced and appeared in the movie "Gosford Park."
Blank and Jensen, both young actors, got the idea for "The Exonerated" after being moved to tears hearing stories about wrongly convicted people at an anti-death penalty conference. They interviewed 20 people who had been on death row, then Balaban suggested they use court testimony for added verisimilitude.
"I feel it's absolutely crucial" for the play to be performed in Washington, said Blank, who grew up in the area. She hopes Congress will pass the proposed Innocence Protection Act -- aimed at providing safeguards in capital-punishment cases -- but she and Jensen don't want their play to be taken as a screed on the death penalty. Blank said she wants only to alert people to the problem of wrongful convictions.
It's not surprising that actors jump at doing the play, Blank said, and that's not only because of the high-profile issue. "They're pretty incredible roles. These people have faced things that most of us have hardly even imagined and come out the other side."
-------- drug war
DEA ties rise in U.S. heroin use to Colombian groups
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 24, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021224-98689037.htm
Heroin use in the United States increased substantially during the past decade, with more than a million people nationwide believed to be addicted to the drug, according to Rogelio E. Guevara, the Drug Enforcement Administration's chief of operations.
The number is up from an estimated 630,000 addicts in 1992, aided in large part by an increase in the amount of heroin being produced in and shipped out of Colombia.
Mr. Guevara recently told a House committee that the use of heroin was cited more than any other illicit drug, except cocaine, during visits to U.S. hospital emergency rooms between 1996 and 1999.
"Where does all this heroin come from? That depends on where you live," he said. "If you live west of the Mississippi, chances are good that most of the heroin sold on your streets comes from Mexico. East of the Mississippi, most of it comes from Colombia."
Colombian cocaine has been a huge commodity in the United States for years, but drug traffickers in Colombia are now trading in heroin, as well - putting the Colombians in competition with smugglers from Southeast and Southwest Asia, who used to dominate the market here. Cumulatively, U.S. users consume about 14 to 19 tons of heroin per year.
Although Colombia produced far less heroin than its Asian counterparts, Mr. Guevara said its product predominates in the U.S. market. He said the DEA Heroin Signature Program, which identifies the source of heroin seized at U.S. ports and on the street, found that 56 percent of the drug seized by federal authorities in 2001 came from Colombia.
Mr. Guevara said that by the early 1990s, opium poppy cultivation in Colombia was expanding rapidly, and in recent years, poppy cultivation and heroin production have become an integral part of the Colombian drug trade. He said that both operations are dominated by independent trafficking groups that function outside the control of the major cocaine organizations.
Colombian heroin traffickers, he said, have established themselves as major sources of supply in the Northeast, the largest heroin market in this country.
"The increase in Colombian heroin is worrisome for a number of reasons," he said. "One is that the Colombian heroin sold on American streets is more potent, which results in far more visits to hospital emergency rooms.
"Greater potency also means that users are able to inhale it, making it far more attractive to potential users than the traditional process of injecting heroin, with all of the health-related and cosmetic problems typical of using hypodermic needles," he said. "The ability to inhale heroin is certainly one reason for the drug's growing popularity."
He said another worry associated with Colombian heroin is the close relationship between drug trafficking and terrorism.
"Intelligence information indicates the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [FARC], which is a State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization, charges a 'tax fee' from heroin traffickers who obtain heroin from areas under FARC control," he said. "The FARC is also suspected of charging a tax to farmers who cultivate poppy plants in areas they control."
Mr. Guevara said FARC and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia derive about 70 percent of their operating revenues from narcotics trafficking.
He said that during the early 1990s, the bulk of the South American heroin smuggled into the United States was transported via couriers on direct commercial flights from Colombia to the international airports in Miami and New York. Most of the couriers arrested in Miami were en route to New York, he said, and their most common method of smuggling was ingestion of small quantities of heroin wrapped in latex.
Heroin also was concealed inside hollowed-out shoes and luggage, in the lining of clothes and inside personal items, he said.
Mr. Guevara said that since the mid-1990s, Colombian heroin traffickers have diversified. They still come into the United States through airports in Miami, New York, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and other cities on commercial flights from Colombia, but they have expanded their smuggling routes to include Argentina, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Panama, Mexico, Venezuela and several countries in Central America and the Caribbean.
In addition, he said, heroin traffickers have begun to send bulk shipments of heroin to the United States using cargo planes, container ships and go-fast vessels. Seizures of 33 to 66 pounds of heroin are common, he said, and seizures of up to 110 pounds of heroin occur, but less frequently.
"Heroin-trafficking organizations will continue to challenge the flexibility and resilience of both domestic and international law-enforcement agencies," Mr. Guevara said.
-------- immigration
Court Upholds Registration Plan
December 24, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/national/24DETA.html
A federal judge in Santa Ana, Calif., today dismissed a lawsuit seeking to end a new registration program that is roiling immigrant communities.
The plaintiffs had accused the Immigration and Naturalization Service of detaining people without notice of charges, a speedy arraignment or bond hearings. But the judge, Alicemarie H. Stotler of Federal District Court, ruled that they had not met a burden of proof and that the court should not interfere with the duties vested in the immigration agency.
The program requires citizens of 19 countries, including Iran, Iraq and North Korea, who have temporary visas to register with the agency. Thousands of people around the country have, and in California several hundred of them were detained for overstaying their visas.
-------- terrorism
In U.S., Terrorism's Peril Undiminished
Nation Struggles on Offense and Defense, and Officials Still Expect New Attacks
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 24, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31589-2002Dec23?language=printer
Late last year, in secret, the Bush administration erected a provisional defense against nuclear terrorism in the nation's capital.
It was called "Ring Around Washington," and it aimed to detect a nuclear or radiological bomb before the weapon could be used. Still under development, according to three knowledgeable sources, the system was pressed into service in a large-scale operational trial. Scientists placed a grid of radiation sensors in the District and at major points of approach by river and road. Vehicles patrolled with mobile sensors. And an elite combat unit from the Joint Special Operations Command, already trained to render harmless a nuclear weapon or its components, moved to heightened alert at a staging area near the capital.
Ring Around Washington has since been shut down, the sources said. Under some conditions, which The Washington Post will not describe, the neutron and gamma ray detectors failed to identify dangerous radiation signatures. In other conditions they raised false alarms over low-grade medical waste and the ordinary background emissions of stone monuments. The Energy Department's national laboratories "learned a lot about how to operate" a distributed network of sensors, one official said, but not enough to keep it in place.
U.S. exposure to ruinous attack, more than 15 months into the war with al Qaeda, remains unbounded. The global campaign launched by President Bush has destroyed Osama bin Laden's Afghan sanctuary, drained his financial resources, scattered his foot soldiers and killed or captured some of his most dangerous lieutenants. But there is nothing in al Qaeda's former arsenal -- nothing it was capable of doing on Sept. 11, 2001 -- that the president's advisers are prepared to say is now beyond the enemy's reach.
The threat of bin Laden's network -- which the White House considers to number perhaps three dozen men at its vital core -- continues in important ways to outpace the national response. Working-level and senior participants in the conflict, many of them interviewed at length, displayed a striking fatalism even when describing their common belief that the United States will eventually prevail. Nearly all of them, when pressed, said they would measure their success by the frequency, not the absence, of mass-casualty attacks against the American homeland.
"They're not 10 feet tall, they're not supermen, and in a lot of cases they're very primitive," said retired Army Gen. Wayne A. Downing, who was President Bush's deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism until July 8, referring to al Qaeda. "But they are probably more capable than before."
One Bush appointee, working full-time in counterterrorism, pointed to Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet's testimony as recently as two months ago that "we were vulnerable to suicidal terrorist attacks and we remain vulnerable to them today." The official said: "With untold billions spent -- money, personnel and blood -- how can we claim any kind of success if we're just as vulnerable as before? It just doesn't balance. It can't balance."
The elements of the U.S. "security deficit," as another current official termed it recently, are varied. In their own fields of responsibility, across a wide range of government functions, nearly all of those interviewed acknowledged laboring under threats for which they have no present answer. In some cases they described the challenge as unavoidable. In others they said they had lost opportunities to respond. In still others, implicitly and explicitly, the officials raised questions about the president's choices in the war on terrorism.
• Thirteen of 20 men that The Post could identify on the government's classified roster of "high value targets" remain unaccounted for. Bush's overriding objective, a high-ranking official at the heart of the effort said Friday, is to capture or kill the small cadre of leaders he sees as uniquely responsible for al Qaeda's potent threat. "We want to get that inner core more than anything," the official said, describing their number as roughly 30. The Post identified the 20 (see box) from interviews and a set of notes made by a participant in the hunt. Called "HVTs" in the argot of government, the 13 men believed at large include four of the five in the uppermost tier. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, in a brief interview for this report, said "we are hunting down systematically members of terrorist networks, but that said, this is not just a numbers game."
• Some of those involved in the hunt said the government lost many and perhaps most of its best chances to kill the top targets in the critical first month of the war in Afghanistan. Disputes at the time over rules of engagement and lines of command, some of which have not been described before, are more significant in retrospect. In October and November 2001, they said, the most wanted enemies were concentrated in Afghanistan. Struggles within the CIA and U.S. Central Command, and between them, prevented operators of the armed Predator drones from opening fire on terrorist targets with Hellfire missiles at least 15 times, according to sources directly involved. The disputes persisted through two changes of the rules of engagement, with more missed opportunities to fire, until spring.
• Now scattered, al Qaeda's network remains capable of global command and control. As it did with box cutters and jetliners on Sept. 11, al Qaeda makes innovative use of ordinary technology to frustrate U.S. efforts to get "inside the plot," the term used by Tenet.
• Of all the uncertainties about al Qaeda operators, the most serious one for the Bush administration is whether there are undiscovered "sleeper cells" now present in the United States. That concern, expressed widely among those interviewed, results from a common belief that there may have been in-country conspirators in the Sept. 11 plot who have not been identified by the FBI. Director Robert S. Mueller III has expressed the view that there were none.
• There are at least two important disagreements among the officials interviewed for this story, one of fact and one of policy. They have no consensus on whether al Qaeda is replacing its top operatives with competent successors as fast as it loses them, which has important implications for the success of the president's strategy. And they do not agree on how soon, and with how much priority, U.S. policy should turn to addressing sources of grievance in the Arab and Islamic worlds -- a difference that leads them to different views on whether the war on al Qaeda will be enhanced or set back by war against Iraq. 'These Guys Continue to Go Back'
The gravest risks from al Qaeda combine its affinity for big targets and its announced desire for weapons of mass destruction.
"Most sobering to me was their research on chemical weapons, radiological dispersion devices, and their fascination with nuclear weapons," said Downing, who granted no interviews during his White House tenure and had not spoken about it until now. "They are obsessed with them."
Terrorism in its latest form has brought home the paradox of "asymmetric war," in which even a powerful nation may be badly hurt by an antagonist of incomparably lesser strength. But the fight with al Qaeda has a symmetry as well. Bush wants to kill al Qaeda from the top, and much the same describes al Qaeda's plan for the United States.
In an interview conducted in June but broadcast in September by the satellite television network al-Jazeera, al Qaeda operative Ramzi Binalshibh said United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, had been aimed at Congress.
U.S. analysts lean to the view that Binalshibh was lying. Four officials said the better evidence points to the White House as the target.
Downing declined to address intelligence questions, but he stated an observation that was also made by currently serving officials on condition that their names not be published. Al Qaeda returned on Sept. 11, 2001, to the World Trade Center, which allied terrorists nearly succeeded in toppling in a 1993 bombing. It failed, then succeeded, in attempts to kill an American diplomat in Amman, Jordan. And after missing the USS The Sullivans in port in Yemen in January 2000, he noted, al Qaeda mounted an identical attack with an explosives-laden boat -- this time successful -- against the USS Cole eight months later.
"These guys continue to go back after targets they have tried to get before," Downing said. "That's why I expect they're going to go back to Washington and why I expect they're going to go back to New York, both because of the symbolic impact of those attacks and the economic effect."
The strongest expression of that view came in very personal terms from a participant in efforts against al Qaeda whose office is adjacent to Pennsylvania Avenue.
"They are going to kill the White House," the official said. "I have really begun to ask myself whether I want to continue to get up every day and come to work on this block." Continuity of Government
Among all the upheavals of war with al Qaeda, the surest indicator of the historic stakes is the ongoing rotation of top U.S. government managers -- scores at a time -- into a bunker deep underground and far from Washington. No president before Bush considered the "continuity of government" to be in doubt or took the costly step of maintaining a permanent presence under shelter.
Those who serve weary tours there describe the experience as surreal -- "pretty cool for about an hour," one said, "but then very, very sobering." Among the sobering features, more than one of them said, is recognition that vital elements of constitutional authority are still at risk, even if planners have foreseen enough to provide for all the eventualities of a catastrophic attack.
The visiting officials work at stainless steel desks and sometimes sleep two to a room when the facility is crowded. Packed with computers and communication gear, the underground vault maintains the records and capabilities that planners think they would need to reconstitute government and shift their headquarters to field offices outside Washington. The Energy Department, for example, has designated the Albuquerque Operations Office, its largest, as its successor headquarters, and the FBI has designated its own largest satellite office, in New York.
Three people with experience in the bunker said members of Bush's Cabinet take turns being present, residing in slightly less humble digs that are designated, with some irony, as the "commander in chief suite." There are many days when no one in the constitutional line of succession is at the site -- for example, when the president, Vice President Cheney or Cabinet secretaries are traveling. And there are Cabinet members whose presence is not relevant to succession. Housing Secretary Mel R. Martinez and Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao -- born, respectively, in Cuba and Taiwan -- are barred from the presidency.
At the White House, some officials see a dangerous hole in the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, a subject Bush has yet to address. If the top three constitutional successors are killed -- the vice president, speaker of the House and president pro tem of the Senate -- then succession moves down a list of Cabinet secretaries. But once the House elects a new speaker, the law is silent on whether the speaker may reclaim priority and replace the former Cabinet member as president. That sets up a potential struggle at a moment when the nation would need every available resource of unity and calm.
Congress has the gravest problems of survival after a catastrophic attack. The House, in particular, has yet to resolve a quandary that would shut down its lawmaking power for months -- at the height of a national emergency -- if a majority of elected members were killed or disabled. The Senate can be replenished swiftly by each state's governor in temporary appointments. The House requires special elections, which now take an average of four months. In the chaotic days after a national calamity, according to testimony by American Enterprise Institute scholar Norman J. Ornstein before a congressionally appointed Continuity of Government Commission, simultaneous special elections in many districts would take at least six months, leaving Congress without a constitutionally mandated quorum.
Some House members oppose any proposed remedy that allows the designation of emergency successors without election. "Never has a member . . . of the House of Representatives of the United States served who has not been elected," said Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), who co-chairs another study group on the subject.
Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), who favors allowing House members to make advance designations of their own emergency successors, said Cox's objection is one of the most common. Another is reluctance to amend the Constitution for any reason.
"People simply sometimes say, 'Well, people would figure out what to do,' " Baird said. "I don't find that a valid argument, but that's the third most common offered." Limits on Anticipating Attacks
With the dismantling of the Ring Around Washington, officials said, there is no adequate prospect that the unexpected arrival of an atomic weapon or a radiological device -- conventional explosives packed with radioactive materials -- will be detected.
Combat teams drawn from Delta Force soldiers and Navy SEALs, who receive months of additional training for the nuclear disarmament mission, remain available on short notice to respond. Their mission, a secret adjunct to the well known Nuclear Emergency Search Team, or NEST, of civilian scientists, was disclosed by The Post in February.
Around the time of the Ring Around Washington experiment, the Joint Special Operations Command ordered the special teams to a readiness status that cut 30 minutes from their standard launch time. More than a year of that hair-trigger alert has begun to show its wear.
The nuclear response mission is now embroiled in interagency dispute. The Defense Department is pushing to shed responsibility for domestic nuclear response. According to sources in both departments, the FBI, which agreed to take on the job in 1999, did not staff or train a unit and is now asking to back out of the assignment.
With existing technology, random sweeps of cities and ports might find a terrorist with nuclear materials, one official said, if "he tries to bring in a big chunk or doesn't shield it right." The Energy Department's two NEST units exercised in random cities before Sept. 11, 2001. Now they exercise where intelligence points to a threat.
For all the work of the national laboratories, there have been no dramatic changes recently in the available instruments. "Until we can change the laws of physics we're not going to make the detectors a great deal better," a knowledgeable official said.
"It's not going to be about the technology," the official said. "It's going to be about intelligence. I am 100 percent sure we will fail if you tell me there's a nuclear weapon 'somewhere in New York City.' If you tell me Lower Manhattan, the odds are a little bit better. If you tell me a neighborhood, we will probably find it."
In the field of biological weapons, there is almost no prospect of detecting a pathogen until it has been used in an attack. After settling a long argument over smallpox inoculation, the Bush administration is working through scenarios in which a large-scale disease outbreak takes place.
"The United States may have to declare martial law someday," Downing said, "in the case of a devastating attack with weapons of mass destruction causing tens of thousands of casualties. This could mean that the military would be given the authority to impose curfews, protect businesses and communities, even make arrests."
Governors normally have jurisdiction over public health emergencies, but a widespread biological attack would cross state boundaries. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson has the power to declare a national public health emergency, in which he could impose a quarantine and require inoculation or treatment of unwilling citizens in the name of public health.
But Thompson has no troops at his direct disposal, and the Bush administration is still working through the complex questions of his relationship to the military's new U.S. Northern Command, which is responsible for homeland defense.
Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, will have her first extended meeting with Air Force Gen. Ralph G. Eberhart, who heads the Northern Command, in January. She said the two institutions needed "to touch base and identify any gaps in what we understand to be our respective roles."
Some government exercises run to date have used scenarios in which quarantine is breached and a disease spreads uncontained.
"Remember," Gerberding said. "These are imaginary experiments . . . so we decide how we're going to handle it." High Value Targets, Lost Chances
Because defending against even the highest-priority threats is so difficult, offense has been at the center of Bush's thinking.
But his favored strategy -- decapitating al Qaeda by hunting down its three dozen top leaders -- has had mixed results elsewhere. Japan's Aum Shinrikyo cult, which unleashed a nerve gas attack in Tokyo's subway system, withered with the arrest of its founding generation of leaders. In the Middle East, the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have grown new leaders and redoubled their suicide bombing attacks in the face of Israel's relentless campaign of "targeted killings."
"As we go after some of these" al Qaeda leaders, "some of them will get replaced," said the official made available by the White House for answers on strategy. "It doesn't appear they can replace them with people of the same quality and training." He acknowledged, however, that "we don't know these [new] guys in great detail."
Downing had a different view.
"Certainly they've been blooded, which has strengthened their misguided commitment to their cause," he said. "Those who have survived have learned valuable lessons. They have adapted, decentralized their organization, grown new leaders. They have had to find new ways of operating. This makes them more dangerous."
In his early White House days, Downing had been among the foremost advocates of accelerating the hunt.
At one meeting in November 2001, according to two people present, he glowered at his colleagues and slammed the flat of his hand against the table, a gesture seldom indulged in the White House Situation Room.
"We've got to kill the [expletives]!" Downing said, voice raised.
His frustration stemmed from what he viewed as missed opportunities. The CIA had a "profile," an official there said, of the appearance from the air of the class of al Qaeda leaders they wanted most. The profile looked for a small traveling party in sport-utility vehicles, with a security team close by and another around a perimeter. Taliban or al Qaeda fighters would show one figure special deference, perhaps kissing the hem of his garment.
Predator drones have about the weight and engine power of a golf cart and resemble mosquitoes with 58-foot wings. But they have lived up to their name. They are uniquely valuable in hunting individuals because they are the only known U.S. technology for finding and shooting at a person in the same moment.
Under its first rules of engagement, the CIA pulled the trigger "in support of" Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks at U.S. Central Command, which led the military's effort in Afghanistan. Far too often, Downing thought, the Central Command became mired in "covering its ass," as two colleagues described his remarks. Its legal adviser applied the laws of war, not the broader authority Bush had granted for lethal force in his September intelligence finding. Approval to fire came late, or not at all.
Downing's frustration was mirrored in the teams at the Predator's controls. One operator put his fist through a computer screen after being forced to hold his fire against a top al Qaeda operative, according to a friend who heard his account. Another broke furniture with his helmet on a similar occasion.
Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, felt obliged to caution Downing that he had no operational role. His blunt talk and exasperated demeanor struck even friendly critics as unsuited to the interagency debate.
"I know how to play the Washington game," Downing said. "It was just at this stage of my life I didn't have the stomach or patience for it. . . . I felt we spent an inordinate amount of time on the NSC process."
Before Downing's departure, described in the White House as a mutual decision, the consensus had moved somewhat his way. Rules of engagement were changed to give the CIA an escape clause in Afghanistan -- its operators could open fire if Central Command did not give an answer in time. Then it won a measure of independent authority.
Still later -- in October -- the agency got its first go-ahead to use the Predator outside Afghanistan. Abu Ali al-Harithi, who had been listed among al Qaeda's most wanted, died in Yemen on Nov. 3 when a missile obliterated his car.
By then, most of the most-wanted operatives had dispersed.
"It took six months, and I wanted to do it in six days," Downing said. Sleeper Cells in the United States Rice, in the interview, said the United States is making progress in "knocking out key nodes of the network, knocking out key operators," adding: "You're not going to get everybody, and you don't get to choose the ones that you get. You get an opportunity, either through hard work or by chance, and you take it."
The hunt for al Qaeda has been slowest in the United States, and inside government there is anxiety about the reasons.
Some of those interviewed said they fear undiscovered sleeper cells in this country, citing gaps in the FBI's knowledge of the Sept. 11 plot. They expressed strong skepticism of the FBI's public stance that 19 hijackers pulled off their complex feat without the kind of local help that al Qaeda always used before.
FBI Director Mueller gave closed testimony in June, made public in September, that "to this day we have found no one in the United States except the actual hijackers who knew of the plot."
FBI investigators acknowledge that mysteries endure. They do not know why, on the eve of his final flight, suspected hijacker leader Mohamed Atta traveled to Portland, Maine.
At first investigators supposed that the detour enabled Atta to avoid Boston's stricter security on the morning he seized control of American Flight 11. But in fact Atta had to pass through security twice, once at each airport. One theory now is that he met on the evening of Sept. 10 with an al Qaeda handler -- to return unused funds or documents, to make a report, or to give the handler a final chance for instructions.
From docks in Portland's Casco Bay, the Quoddy Loop line offers frequent ferries to Canada. No identification was required to buy a ticket. If a handler did meet Atta there, he might have left no trace.
Perhaps because of questions like these, Rice and other top officials give lukewarm backing to the FBI theory that the hijackers worked alone.
"Is it conceivable that there were only the [19] plotters in the United States, and the direction was coming from the outside?" she said. "It is conceivable. If the FBI doesn't have evidence yet, it doesn't mean they won't find evidence."
Larry Mefford, assistant FBI director and chief of the counterterrorism division, said in an interview that the "number one priority in the FBI today is to detect and uncover terrorist sleeper cells" in the United States.
"We have not discovered an operational cell that would be under the model of the 19" hijackers, he said, but the bureau has established "a whole series of tripwires" to "detect highly disciplined and motivated groups of terrorists. I guess I can't tell you with a high level of certainty they're not here. We're looking aggressively to ensure they're not here."
Orange Alert on Orange Street
Some members of Bush's security team conceive homeland security in offensive more than defensive terms. No amount of spending can prevent a severe attack, one senior team member said, but hardening targets forces terrorists "to make more efforts, spend more resources, to overcome" the defensive measures. And every new effort the terrorists make "gives you more chances to see what they're up to."
How to defend themselves locally has been an agonizing question for state and city governments. Their puzzlement emerged clearly on Sept. 10, the eve of a traumatic anniversary, when Attorney General John D. Ashcroft announced an increase in the national threat level from yellow to orange -- high risk.
In New Haven, Conn., Mayor John DeStefano Jr. asked the White House Office of Homeland Security in a conference call what to do.
Answering that question is not the way Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge has conceived his job. The theory behind the advisory system, with danger expressed on a continuum from green to red, is that any change of threat level will be accompanied by "an appropriate set of protective measures." Only local authorities, Ridge tells them, can decide the meaning in their own settings of his generic advice, such as "taking additional precautions at public events."
On Sept. 10, DeStefano decided to open his city's Emergency Operations Center, in the "sub-sub basement" of the government complex on Orange Street. Police, fire and health departments, along with agencies responsible for roads, bridges and utilities, began standing 24-hour watches. Police increased their port patrols, looking for they knew not what.
"After two days, after incurring a lot of overtime, we made the decision to shut it down," DeStefano said. Gaps in Homeland Defense
As Ridge makes the transition to a new role as secretary of the new Homeland Security Department, he will have major gaps to address. The biggest, in the view of many experts, is port defense.
The government's new Transportation Security Agency now screens the shoes of millions of airline passengers but less than 2 percent of the 21,000 shipping containers that arrive in U.S. ports every day. Each is 40 feet long and easily holds the contents of a private home. Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner has said there is "virtually no security for what is the primary system to transport global trade."
Bonner calls for a container security initiative to screen incoming cargo offshore, or in its originating port overseas. White House officials often praise the initiative but its funding is unclear. In fiscal 2002, according to legislators in both parties, the president's lobbyists negotiated a reduction in funding for that initiative to $39 million. Bush signed the bill but did not spend the money. In Bush's fiscal 2003 budget, he has proposed no specific funding for container security.
"Obviously if there's an attack in ports, you could have hundreds of thousands of people die, depending on the weapons used, and there certainly is a colossal risk to the economy," said Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), who has clashed with the White House over spending.
Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for Ridge, said there was no time to spend last year's appropriation for container security. Customs will fund the initiative this year, he said, out of general increases in its budget. Snakes, Weeds and Iraq
Disagreements about the president's strategy, among officials interviewed for this story, sometimes took the form of competing analogies. Those who believed al Qaeda is losing leaders faster than it can replace them spoke of cutting the head off the snake. Those who disagreed spoke of the need to pull up weeds by their roots.
"Roots" was a taboo word in the Bush administration for a time, with "evil" the only acceptable explanation for the attacks of Sept. 11. More recently, senior Bush advisers have addressed other sources of al Qaeda's support.
Speaking on Dec. 11 of cooperation with Islamic and Arab allies, Tenet said, "We can't let this engagement stop at the level of tactical wartime cooperation, as necessary as that is. We also need to make more fundamental connections. Because at the end of the day, we cannot hope to make lasting progress in the war against terrorism without serious steps to address 'the circumstances that give it rise.' "
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell followed that two days later with a call to bridge "the hope gap" among the young men and women in the Arab world who have grown hostile to the United States. "It has become increasingly clear that we must broaden our approach to the region if we are to achieve success," he said. "We must work with peoples and governments to close the gulf between expectation and reality."
Powell, declaring that "hope begins with a paycheck," accompanied his remarks with an offer of $29 million in new assistance to be divided among 23 countries. They have a combined population of about 260 million.
The debate over roots has also addressed the prospect of war with Iraq, with some officials saying it will intensify rage against the United States. That rage promotes a "functional sanctuary," as one official put the argument, among sympathetic populations in the Arab and Islamic world.
Bush and his senior advisers argue that war to dislodge Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, should it come, would be integral to the global struggle with al Qaeda. They say Iraq's undeclared biological and chemical weapons, in potential combination with al Qaeda's ruthless intentions, make for the most dangerous possible terrorist threat. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz has taken to using a new shorthand for that formula: "weapons of mass terror."
Most officials interviewed acknowledged some tradeoffs at the tactical level between the two conflicts.
The FBI, according to sources, has been obliged to shift some emphasis in its counterterrorism and counterespionage units from al Qaeda to Iraq, though senior officials said the shift was modest. And in the event of war with Iraq, formal priorities in intelligence-gathering will give that war first call on scarce resources such as photo interpretation, translation and satellite coverage.
"There's no such thing as a tie in priorities," one national security official said. "One of them is going to win, and for the duration of any war it will be Iraq."
Among the costliest tradeoffs comes in the currency of linguists and regional specialists. No authorized government spokesman acknowledged a conflict, but every affected agency has said in the past year that it had shortages in those skills.
Downing said the scarcity of foreign language speakers with top-secret security clearances had left "reams of material waiting to be exploited" in the war against al Qaeda. He was so alarmed by the gap that he suggested, before leaving the White House job, that intelligence agencies hire native speakers with abbreviated security checks.
The D.C. area, he said, has "probably the best-educated cab drivers in the world that can speak any language you want."
In the months after Sept. 11, one of the CIA's most important South Asia resources was a man named Bob, then station chief in Pakistan, who will be identified here by first name only. Conversant with local languages, he was immersed in the people and institutions of the nation that arguably remains most important to the war on al Qaeda.
Recently he returned to headquarters in Langley. His new assignment: "issue manager" for Iraq.
"He completed his tour," said a senior intelligence official. "When you have something like Iraq come up, you want to put your best guy on it."
Staff researchers Lucy Shackelford and Margot Williams contributed to this report.
----
ANOTHER WAR, STILL NO PROOF
A Groundless Ground War Edges Nearer
TED RALL
12/24/02
http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/site/viewru.cfm?uc_full_date=20021224&uc_comic=ru&uc_daction=X
NEW YORK--Eleven days after September 11, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell promised to release proof that Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were guilty of planning and executing the attacks on New York and Washington. "We will put before the world, the American people, a persuasive case that there will be no doubt when that case is presented that it is Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, who has been responsible," Powell told ABC News.
National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, speaking a few channels over, on CNN, echoed Powell's pledge. "Clearly we do have evidence, historical and otherwise, about the relationship to the Al Qaeda network to what happened on September 11," Rice said on Sept. 22nd. "We will begin to lay out that evidence and we will do it with friends, allies and the American people and others."
Afghanistan, along with Pakistan, had hosted Al Qaeda training camps. Al Qaeda, Bush said, had attacked us. So we bombed Afghanistan. The Bush Administration spent the next three months overseeing the dropping of explosives, killing an estimated 10,000 Taliban soldiers and at least 3,500 Afghan civilians. During the year since we installed a puppet ruler, Hamid Karzai, as interim Afghan president, at least 36 American soldiers have lost their lives defending Karzai's fragile regime.
So where's Rice's "evidence, historical and otherwise," confirming that Al Qaeda carried out 9/11? Where is Powell's "persuasive case"? The Bushies, as usual, are keeping mum. We, the American people, have yet to see the slightest shred of evidence tying Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, Michael Jackson or the Easter Bunny to the attacks.
Fifteen months and still no proof! There are only three logical explanations for Bush's failure to produce the goods:
Al Qaeda and the Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11. Possible, but unlikely. Who else would have done it?
What with the war and all, the Bushies simply forgot to write up a report. Impossible. If proof existed, the Administration would have released it to make people like me shut up.
The evidence is circumstantial at best. Now we're talking. More likely than not, American intelligence strongly suspects bin Laden et al. but can't prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Police detectives are repeatedly frustrated by this dilemma. What do you do when you know in your gut that a suspect is guilty, but you don't have enough evidence to press charges? The answer is painfully obvious: you let the bastard walk. In a society based on law, evidence must be sufficiently compelling in order to charge a defendant, much less convict him. To settle for less is to sacrifice the essential principle of our nation which holds that everyone--even radical Islamists--is presumed innocent.
George W. Bush, an unscrupulous man whose arrogant contempt for the law elevated him to the White House, despises basic American values. He acted as Afghanistan's judge, jury and executioner--without even possessing sufficient proof to charge bin Laden in an American court.
Now, however, Bush is paying a price for the decision not to lay his cards on the table regarding Afghanistan. While 90 percent of voters say they don't doubt that Saddam Hussein is developing weapons of mass destruction, 72 percent told a Los Angeles Times poll on Dec. 15 that Bush has not yet provided enough evidence to justify starting a war against Iraq. This figure clearly includes many Republicans who otherwise support Bush's policies.
Most Americans have a gut feeling that Iraq has WMDs. But they don't think a gut feeling is sufficient cause to go to war.
Here we go again. Does the U.S. really possess proof, as it claims, that Saddam is up to no good? Or does it merely suspect--in other words, have a gut feeling--that Iraqi scientists are cooking up smallpox bombs hundreds of feet beneath the desert? The American people aren't being allowed to see the evidence excusing the bloody war about to be waged in their name. Nor are the prospective allies whose help--and young men--we are requesting. "To say that we know but we won't tell you is not very persuasive," Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, said. "It's not a poker game where you call your cards and call the other's bluff."
Incredibly, Bush even resisted turning over intelligence data on Iraqi weapons to the U.N., information might help inspectors prove that Saddam was violating the 1991 ceasefire agreement.
Approval ratings for an American war on Iraq are slipping. Unless he coughs up definitive proof of Iraqi wrongdoing or calls off the whole thing, this latest oil-driven military misadventure may become Bush's political Waterloo.
(Ted Rall is editor of "Attitude: The New Subversive Political Cartoonists," an anthology of cartoons, ephemera and interviews with 21 of America's best editorial cartoonists. Ordering and review-copy information are available at nbmpub.com.)
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
Greener, 'cleaner' locomotive for U.S. railroads introduced by GE Transportation
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
By Charles Sheehan,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/12/12242002/ap_49269.asp
PITTSBURGH - American railroads will test drive a new generation of diesel-electric locomotives next year that emit 50 percent less smoke and 30 percent less smog-producing nitrogen oxide.
GE Transportation Systems rolled out its Evolution Series locomotive Monday in Erie, Penn.
The machines will be the "cleanest diesel-powered locomotive ever made," said Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman.
The introduction of the 4,400-horsepower locomotive comes two years before tougher EPA emission standards are scheduled to take effect. Each year, locomotives emit an estimated 5 percent of all the nation's nitrogen oxide, a gas that contributes to ground-level ozone that can lead to respiratory problems.
Erie-based GE Transportation has spent six years on research and development and invested US$200 million in the new locomotive, company officials said.
Besides meeting air quality standards, the new engines will have about 3 percent better fuel efficiency than current locomotives, the company said.
GE Transportation will put 40 locomotives into use in 2003 for comparison use alongside standard locomotives. GE has not taken any orders yet and is still negotiating with railroads on who will get the test engines.
"We are aware of what GE is doing with the new design, and we are certainly interested in following its development and possibly testing the engine," said CSX Transportation Inc. spokesman Dan Murphy.
Evolution locomotives are expected to cost 10 percent to 15 percent more than current locomotives, which can cost up to about US$2.5 million.
-------- environment
Federal Judge Rules Los Angeles Violates Clean Water Laws
December 24, 2002
New York Times
By BARBARA WHITAKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/national/24SEWE.html
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 23 - A federal judge found Los Angeles in violation of the Clean Water Act today, holding it liable for 297 sewage spills from January 2001 to July 2002.
The ruling by Judge Ronald S. W. Lew of Federal District Court here could result in fines exceeding $8 million - $27,500 for each spill - and court-ordered remedies.
"The City of Los Angeles can no longer treat daily sewage spills as business as usual," said Steve Fleischli, executive director of the Santa Monica Baykeeper, an environmental group that sued the city about the spills four years ago. "This sets the stage for liability on thousands of spills."
In court documents, Baykeeper, which was joined in the suit by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board and several community groups, contends that the city has a "chronic, continuing and unacceptable number of spills from its sewage collection system." From 1993 to January 2002, according to documents, the city reported 3,000 spills from its pipes.
"This isn't a third-world city. We should be able to do a lot better," said Fran B. Diamond, chairman of the regional water quality board.
Baykeeper said there had been more than 2,000 sewage spills since its suit was filed in 1998 despite negotiations to try to resolve the problem. Of the 297 spills cited in today's hearing, the city conceded to all but 4. In those cases, the city argued that the sewage did not reach water. But Judge Lew found that a spill constituted a violation.
A trial is scheduled for early 2004 to address penalties and remedies. Efforts to resolve the case through a negotiated settlement will continue, lawyers said.
Adel Hagekhalil, division manager with the city's waste water engineering division, said the city was working to eliminate the problem. He noted that the Board of Public Works, an oversight board appointed by the mayor, had set a goal of reducing spills by 25 percent by 2005.
"We've been working for four years trying to understand the issues," Mr. Hagekhalil said, "trying to find remedies and I think we've been successful in some areas."
Among the initiatives Mr. Hagekhalil cited was a grease-control program intended for restaurants, which emphasizes cleaning techniques and has enabled the city to reduce grease-caused spills by 30 percent in the last year.
He added that the city had spent more than $1 billion in the last 10 years upgrading sewers and planned to spend another $2 billion in the next 10 years for more improvements.
Los Angeles has about 6,500 miles of sewers, more than half of which are at least 50 years old. The system is plagued by persistent blockages by grease and roots. The spills typically end up in waterways like the Los Angeles River and Ballona Creek, running into the ocean and fouling beaches.
The E.P.A. is also pursuing cases against other cities, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Miami and New Orleans. Still, officials said, Los Angeles has one of the highest sewage spills in the country, averaging two a day.
According to Baykeeper, a disproportionate number of spills occur in neighborhoods that have high percentages of African-American and Latino residents. Several homeowner groups have banded to protest the spills.
--------
2 Western Cities Join Suit to Fight Global Warming
December 24, 2002
New York Times
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/politics/24ENVI.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - In a novel legal action, the City Councils of Oakland, Calif., and Boulder, Colo., have voted to join Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace in a lawsuit charging two federal agencies with failing to conduct environmental reviews before financing projects that the cities say contribute to global warming.
The lawsuit contends that the agencies - the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation - have provided $32 billion in financing and insurance over the last 10 years for fossil-fuel extraction projects overseas like oil fields, pipelines and coal-fired power plants without assessing the contribution those projects make to global warming.
Spokesmen for the two federal agencies, which provide financing for American corporations for projects that commercial banks often deem too risky, said they could not comment on the specifics of the lawsuit because they were in litigation but they said they followed good environmental practices.
Mayor Jerry Brown of Oakland, who is a former governor of California and a former presidential candidate, said in an interview today that the suit was necessary because "there's been such an abject failure on the part of the Bush administration to protect the people of this country from the seriously deleterious effects of climate disruption."
The Oakland city council, which voted on Dec. 17 to join the suit, contends that global warming could cause the sea levels to rise, putting the city's groundwater aquifers at risk of saltwater contamination and threatening to flood the airport and sewer systems.
Mayor Will Toor of Boulder, said in a statement that Boulder officials, who voted to join the suit in August, were disturbed by predictions that global warming would bring more rain and less snow, which could threaten water availability in much of the West, where the water supply relies on gradual melting of the annual snowpack.
At the same time, Mr. Toor said that predictions of severe drought could require water restrictions and might mean an increased risk of wildfires, which could affect not only human life but the city budget to the tune of millions of dollars.
The Bush administration, which rejected joining the Kyoto Treaty on climate change, has been increasingly criticized for its climate policy, even though last year President Bush accepted findings by a panel of American experts that most of the global warming in recent decades had been caused by human activity.
Last year, Mr. Bush set a climate policy that until 2012 would rely on voluntary measures by industries to slow growth in emissions of carbon dioxide and the other heat-trapping gases. He said more research was needed to clarify the potential environmental risks of warming before stronger measures were taken, although White House officials said recently that they might speed up their timetable in seeking compliance.
Bo Ollison, a spokesman for the Export-Import bank, said that the bank had followed all necessary procedures in its projects. "The bank is very confident that we apply all rules, laws and regulations, including N.E.P.A., whenever we do a transaction," he said.
Lawrence Spinelli, a spokesman for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, said, "All projects OPIC supports must meet the strictest environmental standards." He added, "Project sponsors must provide environmental impact assessments, major projects are posted on the OPIC Web site to allow for public comment, and, where appropriate, OPIC's environmental staff will actually visit the host country of a potential project to conduct due diligence."
The suit, however, filed in United States District Court in San Francisco, says the two agencies have refused to review the fossil-fuel projects they are involved in for their effects on climate change and that such reviews are required by the federal government.
"The case law is clear," said Brian Dunkiel, a Vermont lawyer representing the environmental groups and the cities. The National Environmental Policy Act, he said, "requires agencies to look at the impacts of their activities if a decision is made in the United States and the activity causes impact on the United States or on the global commons," meaning Antarctica and the international oceans.
Mr. Dunkiel added, "The agencies say there is no significant impact, but they have made that determination without doing an environmental assessment."
He said the suit targets these two relatively obscure federal agencies because the fossil-fuel projects that they finance account for the release of significant carbon dioxide emissions, both agencies "have virtually completely evaded all" National Environmental Policy Act review, and they were both designated by the administration as playing a major role in the Bush/Cheney energy plan.
The suit seeks to have the agencies conduct the environmental reviews on their future energy projects so that their claims of no significant impact can be scrutinized.
----
Mistletoe Attracts Wildlife - Not Just Kisses
December 24, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2002/2002-12-24-09.asp#anchor1
WASHINGTON, DC, The next time you pucker up under the mistletoe, consider this: mistletoe also provides essential food, cover, and nesting sites for an amazing number of birds, butterflies, and mammals in the United States, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
The white-berried American mistletoe that many hang in hopes of winning a kiss at Christmas is just one of more than 1,300 species of mistletoe found worldwide. More than 20 of these species are endangered.
Wild American mistletoe (Photo courtesy USGS)
Two kinds of mistletoes are native to the United States: the American mistletoe and the dwarf mistletoe. American mistletoe is found from New Jersey to Florida and west through Texas.
The dwarf mistletoe, much smaller than its kissing cousin, is found from central Canada and southeastern Alaska to Honduras and Hispaniola, but most species are found in western United States and Mexico.
Mistletoe is no newcomer to this country: excavations of packrat middens reveal that dwarf mistletoes have been part of our forests for more than 20,000 years. Some fossil pollen grains even indicate that the plant has been here for millions of years.
"Mistletoes should be viewed as a natural component of healthy forest ecosystems, of which they have been a part for thousands, if not millions of years," said Rob Bennetts, a USGS research scientist.
Mistletoes grow on the branches of trees and shrubs. According to USGS biologists, the American mistletoe's scientific name, Phoradendron, means "thief of the tree" in Greek. Once its seed lands on a host tree, the mistletoe sends out roots that penetrate the tree and start pirating some of the host tree's nutrients and minerals.
But mistletoes are not true parasites. Instead, they are what scientists call "hemi-parasites" because most of them have the green leaves necessary for photosynthesis.
Mistletoes grow into thick masses of branching, misshapen stems, giving rise to a popular name of witches' brooms, or the apt Navajo name of "basket on high."
The plant's common name - mistletoe - is derived from early observations that mistletoe would often appear in places where birds had left their droppings. "Mistel" is the Anglo-Saxon word for dung, and "tan" is the word for twig. Thus, mistletoe means "dung on a twig."
Even though bird droppings do not generate mistletoe plants, birds are an important part of mistletoe life. Birds find mistletoe a great place for nesting and many birds eat mistletoe berries, including grouse, mourning doves, bluebirds, evening grosbeaks, robins and pigeons.
Diane Larson, a USGS researcher, studied mistletoes and birds in Arizona.
"I found that phainopeplas, which rely on mistletoe almost exclusively for food during the winter, were also the species most likely to disperse the mistletoe seeds to sites suitable for germination and establishment," Larson said. "Both the bird and the plant benefited from this relationship."
This year, USGS is beginning a study on phainopeplas and mistletoes that live on acacia and mesquite trees in the desert. Todd Esque, a USGS researcher, said that his goal is to understand the distribution of the host trees in relation to mistletoe patterns and bird behavior.
"We know the relationship is mutually beneficial for both species," said Esque.
Birds find mistletoe a great place for nesting, particularly the dense witches' brooms. Northern and Mexican spotted owls and other raptors show a marked preference for witches' brooms as nesting sites. In one study, 43 percent of spotted owl nests were associated with witches' brooms.
A USGS researcher found that 64 percent of all Cooper's hawk nests in northeastern Oregon were in mistletoe. Other raptors that use witches' brooms as nesting sites include great gray owls, long-eared owls, goshawks, and sharp-shinned hawks.
Many migratory birds also nest in witches' broom, including gray jay, northern beardless-tyrannulet, red crossbills, house wrens, mourning doves, pygmy nuthatches, chickadees, Western tanagers, chipping sparrows, hermit thrushes, Cassin's finches and pine siskins.
"A well disguised nest provides protection against predators such as the great horned owls," Bennetts said.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Ailing China Rights Advocate Is Released and Sent to U.S.
December 24, 2002
New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/24/international/asia/24CND-CHIN.html
BEIJING, Dec. 24 - China released its most prominent pro-democracy prisoner today, sending him to exile and medical treatment in the United States.
The release of Xu Wenli, 59, who spent more than 16 of the last 21 years in prison for his irrepressible advocacy of civic rights, was seen as a signal of Beijing's strong desire for good relations with the United States, coming one week after a visiting American diplomat made pleas on his behalf.
American officials and human rights groups abroad have repeatedly sought Mr. Xu's release since late 1998, when Mr. Xu received a 13-year sentence on subversion charges after he helped organize an independent political party, the China Democracy Party. The appeals grew more urgent after 1999, when prison doctors discovered that Mr. Xu had a chronic and progressive hepatitis B infection.
While other prominent dissidents have been released over the years on what often appeared to be trumped-up medical grounds, Mr. Xu's liver disease is serious and worsening, family members said.
Officially, he was granted medical parole so that he could seek advanced medical treatment in the United States, said John Kamm, the head of an American rights foundation, who said he was authorized by the Chinese to announce Mr. Xu's release.
"This was directly related to the Chinese government's desire to improve relations with the United States," said Mr. Kamm, founder and chairman of the Dui Hua Foundation in San Francisco, which monitors Chinese political and religious prisoners.
This evening, with no publicity here, Mr. Xu and his wife of more than three decades, He Xintong, boarded a plane for an undisclosed location in the United States. The couple's daughter has lived for years in Boston.
The Associated Press reported that the daughter, Xu Jin, a schoolteacher, was en route to Chicago to meet her parents and planned to take them to New York for a meal in Chinatown. "It's a very merry Christmas," she said. "First, I'm getting some food for them, because my dad doesn't have much teeth left, so can only eat soft food."
Last week, during a bilateral meeting on human rights here, Lorne Craner, the assistant United States secretary of state for human rights, placed Mr. Xu at the top of a list of political prisoners whose release the United States sees as a priority. The American ambassador and other officials have often called for the release of Mr. Xu and other prominent dissidents.
While welcoming Mr. Xu's freedom, rights advocates abroad noted that dozens of others who pushed for a new democracy party in 1998 remain imprisoned and that overall, thousands of people are in jail for peaceful expressions of dissent or efforts to organize.
Among them are Qin Yongmin, 49, a close associate of Mr. Xu's, who received a 12-year sentence in December 1998, and Wang Youcai, 36, the main founder of the ill-fated China Democracy Party that year, who was sentenced to 11 years.
American officials have also sought the release of Rebiya Kadeer, a prominent Uighur Muslim businesswoman from the western province of Xinjiang, who is imprisoned after being accused of fomenting Uighur independence.
Born in 1943, Mr. Xu described himself as an idealistic Marxist during the 1960's, and in the revolutionary spirit of that era, he decided to get his learning in society rather than attend university.
He spent time in the Navy, then as an electrician with the Beijing railroads. But in the late 1970's he emerged as a leader of the "democracy wall" movement, a brief outpouring of calls for political rights that was soon dealt with harshly. Mr. Xu spent 12 years in prison, with long stretches in solitary confinement, before his release in 1993.
Mr. Xu could be a prickly figure, and he publicly feuded with another democracy wall activist, Wei Jingsheng, who became well known abroad for his eloquent calls for democracy and who was sent into exile in the United States in 1997, after spending much of his adult life in prison.
But Mr. Xu's single-minded devotion to democratic principles never flagged, and in person, he was known for his steely analyses of the Communist government's half-measures and frequent flouting of its own constitution.
In 1998, during what appeared to be a political softening around the time of a friendly visit to China by President Bill Clinton, Mr. Xu and Mr. Qin together made open calls for free labor unions and independent political parties. In the face of intense surveillance and repeated brief detentions, they tried to set up a domestic human-rights-monitoring network using e-mail and faxes.
Then, as the fledgling China Democracy Party attracted followers and attention, the two joined forces with Mr. Wang - a younger activist who had cut his teeth in the crushed 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
Late in 1998, the party was formally banned and the authorities rounded up scores of its followers around the country. The quick, harsh sentences dealt to Mr. Xu, Mr. Qin and Mr. Wang triggered angry words from Washington and other Western governments.
The day in December 1998 that he received his 13-year sentence, after a three-and-a-half-hour secret trial, Mr. Xu was allowed a half-hour with his wife.
"He told me he'd be able to handle the pain," Ms. He said in an interview. "He said that this would give him time to think things over and calmly reflect on what has happened."
Earlier, Mr. Xu rejected proposals to go into exile. But his worsening medical condition, as well as his lengthy new sentence, apparently led him to change his mind.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.